


cape caem, revisited

by dreamtowns



Series: Head Above Water [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: <- nothing too bad; only some unfinished sentences but it'll make sense you'll see, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Alternate Universe – Supernatural Elements, Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ardyn Being Ardyn, BTW i know nothing about farming. or gardening. or fishing so., Chronic Illness, Cuddling & Snuggling, Curses, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Emotional Abuse, Intentionally Bad Spelling & Grammar, Medical Inaccuracies, Mild Language, Past Kidnapping, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-20 03:11:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18984028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamtowns/pseuds/dreamtowns
Summary: “Wow,” Prompto drawls out once he’s done, sending a fierce glower at the Quay. “Extorting a child? How unpleasant.”Noctis makes a face. “I’m not a child.”“Baby,” Prompto says, no less fond than he always is, chin propped up on his hands. “In this form, you’re a legitimateinfant.”Noctis dips a hand into the bay, grabs hold of a passing fish—a Lucian Catfish—and flings it directly at Prompto’s face. At the sound of Prompto’s squeals and whines, he thinks, victoriously,who’s the infant, now?





	cape caem, revisited

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Final Fantasy XV. All rights reserved to its developers: Square Enix. All that is mine is the plot of this story in particular and any original characters introduced. No copyright infringement intended. No money is being made from this work. This is purely for entertainment purposes.
> 
> i wrote this in four days. please send me some sanity, i seem to have left mine someplace unknown. lemme know what u think in the comments :0
> 
> also ao3 is being WACK so if there's like? large chunks of text or anything missing . . . please lemme know lol

The Mer appears on a Thursday evening.

Noctis notices the sudden guest when he pokes his head out of the lighthouse, attention pulled by the sounds of raucous splashing, and a high, lyrical hiss of contentment. The Mer sits on a rock near the shore, sunbathing, most likely, as the last dredges of sun make way for the moon; her dark red and bright orange scales glimmer under the soft light of sundown. It’s a sight that makes Noctis’ breath catch in his throat.

It’s a fishing day, in Noctis’s world, but there’s something wrong with the light for the lighthouse and he had spent most of his day surrounded by oil, screws, and other mechanical nonsense that makes his head spin on a good day. A normal person would’ve called an engineer or someone who knew what they were doing, but Noctis had made a deal when he moved into the abandoned home of Cape Caem.

 _He must cause no trouble_ , and that meant he couldn’t pester others with something he could easily fix himself . . . with Google’s help, obviously.

The Mer’s a Tiger Rockfish; Noctis can tell by the pattern of red stripes on her scales and fins, the orange a pretty contrast. It also helps that Noctis has a degree in marine biology, his love for fish (and the sea, in general ~~, _especially_ the Mer~~) bypassing his guardians’ contempt for anything to do with the sea.

He waits for the sun to lower a bit more before he makes his way to the light switch and turns on the lighthouse’s light for any passing ships. Not many come near Cape Caem these days, but it’s a habit that Noctis, having lived in this quiet and peaceful place for little more than a year, can’t shake off.

The light grasps the Mer’s attention, predictably, so Noctis finds himself pinned under a bright gaze when he steps out of the lighthouse elevator and into the barely-there sunlight. He pauses, making sure to keep his body language open and nonthreatening, and makes his way down the steps.

He hits the sand after the fourth step, and the Mer continues to watch him. Expression curious and a little guarded, but there’s no hostility there, and Noctis knows it’s safe for him to walk to his fishing spot, a simple, wooden dock he fixed up when he first arrived here, where his rod and supplies already waited his return.

Noctis prepares his gear for a simple night of fishing, like it always is on Thursday evenings, and he knows he’ll fish until it becomes too dark to be anything but dangerous for him to be throwing around a line with a hook attached to it. Then, he’ll pack up with only his phone light to guide him, make his way up to the small house on the cliffside of Cape Caem, cook and eat a quick dinner of fish and rice (and, sadly, vegetables), shower, and sleep, only to rise with the sun and begin the day again.

Rinse and repeat.

It’s a simple monotony that makes Noctis breathe far easier than he used to; it sinks into the bones, grasping it the way a line hook grasps the inside of a fish’s mouth; settles around his shoulders the way his oversized sweaters and jackets do, providing him comfort and warmth and protection whenever he desired it.

His guardian despised quiet moments and repetitive schedules, but Noctis thrived with them.

The Mer watches him quietly, and Noctis does his best to ignore her as he falls into the steady routine of casting his line and reeling in whatever he happens to catch. They remain like that for a good while, and then Noctis hears a splash.

Assuming the Mer has left, Noctis turns slightly to see the vacant rock, and nearly shrieks when he comes face to face with said Mer.

They only have the moonlight for sight, but it captures her features, nonetheless. The Mer looks refined yet gentle; orange-red scales cover most of her cheekbones. Her eyes a soft brown, her hair a midnight black pinned into some sort of intricate bun by . . . were those _clams_?

Noctis blinks, pulls himself out of his stupor (he had never really seen a Mer up close, especially not by his docks), and sends her a nervous smile. Was she offended by his fishing? Noctis hoped he hadn’t caught a fish she wished to have for a meal.

“H-Hello . . ..”

Apparently, it’s what the Mer is looking for because she trills and speaks in the Mer tongue; a language that was once considered a dangerous melody to human ears, and Noctis can sort of understand why. He knows that there is truth in those myths that said Mer liked to lure sailors and bystanders into the sea with their voices, wrapping them up in the warmth and security of their songs right before they drowned them.

Noctis hopes he isn’t about to be drowned.

He has to harvest his carrots tomorrow morning. 

“I’m sorry,” Noctis says once the Mer stops speaking; he grips his fishing rod tighter, and knows he’s trembling. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re saying . . . um, ma’am . . ..”

He might be terrified, but that didn’t mean he had to be _rude_. He’s also pretty sure his guardian would know if he hadn’t been anything but gentlemanly, even to a Mer, even if it led to his death. Noctis thinks he’d prefer to drown by a Mer than face his guardian’s sharp and biting disappointment.

The Mer makes a noise in the back of her throat before she disappears under the dock. Noctis thinks she understands what he was trying to say and attempts to go back to fishing.

He doesn’t catch any fish, five minutes in, but Noctis has perfected patience when it concerns marine life.

Half a second passes, and Noctis almost goes into cardiac arrest when the Mer appears right in front of him. She has a near mountain of fish in her arms, and—

And she’s in her human form.

He can tell by the way some of her stripes and scales have, well, disappeared by the shift. Not all are gone, though; a stripe curls across the bridge of her nose, and there are patches of scales here and there that shimmer on her abdomen, on her arms. They sort of remind Noctis of freckles and beauty marks. She has seaweed wrapped around her chest.

“Um,” Noctis says, and then stops.

“Noctis,” the Mer breathes out. “Your Highness.”

He wonders if he had hit his head in the lighthouse and, as a consequence, is hallucinating.

The only option, of course, is to bring the Mer inside his home as it’s clear she isn’t going to shift back and return to her own.

It’s a bit messy, in that lived in way, and Noctis doesn’t have guests much often, except for his guardian who likes to appear and disappear only when it suits him, and there’s no staff to pester Noctis to keep his area clean, and—

He lets the Mer inside, drags the icebox of fish inside the kitchen, gives her a clean pair of pajamas, directs her to the bathroom to change (which she ignores and just . . . changes right in the middle of his kitchen which—okay, whatever. Noctis isn’t one to judge) and does his best to cook for two without losing his mind.

When he’s finished, he slides a bowl of rice and fish in her direction. They eat in silence, but she never takes her eyes off him. As if she’s terrified that he will disappear if she does.

Noctis, terribly confused and exhausted, clears his throat when he’s polished a decent third of his food. “Um. I’m sorry, but . . . I don’t know, um, your name . . ..”

“Iris,” she speaks after a moment. “Iris Amicitia, your Highness.”

“. . . Right,” says Noctis, and before his anxiety grapples deep in his chest, asks, “Why are you, um, calling me . . . your Highness? I’m – I’m not a prince, uh, Ms. Amicitia.”

She curls her lip and, for a biting moment, Noctis thinks he’s offended her. “Call me Iris, I’m no Miss,” she says, a light laugh on her tongue. Some of his tension leaves his shoulders. “And you _are_ a prince, your Highness.”

“Of what?” Noctis snorts. “Fishing?”

“No,” Iris replies. “Of the Sea.”

Noctis thinks he’s going to throw up his fish.

“Noctis Lucis Caelum . . .,” Iris begins softly, almost gently, but no less firm and resolute. “Born to the 112th King of Lucis, Regis Lucis Caelum, and Aulea Lucis Caelum. The Crown Prince and darling of Leviathan, our Mother Goddess.”

“Right,” says Noctis.

Despite his young age, he has the sudden desire to open a bottle of whiskey and drink it completely. Perhaps if he did, this would start to make sense.

“I understand you don’t believe me,” Iris adds after she observes him for a moment, “but you will.”

She sounds so sure, so final, that all Noctis can do is agree and finish the rest of his dinner.  

 

*

 

He wakes with the sun, as usual, and finds that Iris is not there. _A dream_ , he tells himself, if only to cease the murmurs of discontent and doubt. He was not a Prince, _especially_ not one that belonged to the most affluential Mer kingdom in existence. He shoves all thoughts of Iris to the back of his mind, dresses for the day and eats something that resembles breakfast, and heads out to his little farm where the carrots await.

He gets through half of them before he realizes he has company. He looks up, crouched over the second row, and sees Iris with another man—another Mer, Noctis thinks, though this one is far older. Noctis can’t make out all of his features, but the tell-tale red and white that poke out from under his sleeves, from around his face, shimmer under the sun. He isn’t as tall as his guardian, thankfully, but he’s still muscled and lean. There is an air about this man that makes Noctis want to barricade himself at the top of the lighthouse for a good hour or two.

He spies another Mer ambling up the stoned path; this one with ink on his arms (Mer’s could have _tattoos?_ ), deliberately placed braids in his hair that Noctis vaguely thinks belongs to the settlements in Galahd, and a mischievous danger in his smirk.

Noctis wants to abandon his carrots and run—but, well, there are little places he can run _to_. He isn’t that fast of a runner, either.

“Um.” Noctis wipes his hands on the apron tied around his waist, almost always covered in the dirt and stains that come from farming and ignores the way his fingers tremble. “Um. Can I help you? Are y’all lost?”

The more nervous Noctis becomes, the more his southern Cleigne tang comes out. His guardian would have a _stroke_ if he heard.

Iris all but beams. “Prince Noctis,” she greets, and motions to the two men beside her. “I’d like to introduce you to Cor Leonis—he’s the Marshal of the Crownsguard—and Nyx Ulric, the Captain of the Kingsglaive.”

Noctis waves only to realize a moment later he’s also waving a carrot. His cheeks burn and he drops his eyes back down to the earthy soil. “Hi.”

“Your Highness,” the men greet.

Noctis makes a noise in his throat; something similar to a wheeze. “Don’t—stop . . . I’m not your prince, so stop, uh. Calling me that.”

“See?” he hears Iris murmur. “He doesn’t believe us . . . he doesn’t _know_.”

Noctis pulls out a handful of carrots a bit more roughly than needed. “Just—call me Noct or, or Noctis,” he tells them as he reaches for another. “Not. Not those titles, okay?”

“Okay,” Iris agrees, and then, after a stilted pause, elbows Cor and Nyx into agreeing as well. Noctis half-quirks his lips in amusement at their disgruntled expressions but doesn’t look at them for longer than a second or so.

He doesn’t like how they look at him.

They look at Noctis as if he is the most precious being to exist. Noctis doesn’t know what to do with that revelation. He’s not sure he wants to understand.

They watch as he pulls the rest of the carrots ready to be harvested quietly; they make no sound or noise of discomfort as he checks over his vegetables, pulls the ones he deems satisfactory, and places them in a wicker basket. They say nothing as he tends to his crops, watering them, murmuring to them and encouraging their growth and health.

Noctis might not have a speck of magic within him, but, regardless, a little love went a long, long way. He knows that quite well, after all.

“So,” Iris says brightly, abruptly, and Noctis nearly drops his shears on his foot. “What, um, do you do around here, High—Noctis.”

He ignores the stumble and shrugs. “Depends on the day, really, but I mostly just . . . tend to my crops and plants, keep the lighthouse clean and updated, fish.”

“Sounds like a busy life,” Iris giggles. There’s no malice or heat in her words, so he smiles a little.

“Yeah,” he says, something warm and a little sad in his chest as he grabs the watering can for his flowerbed and begins tending to them. “Very peaceful. Just how I like it.”

“Do you go into town?”

“Sometimes.”

Nyx says something in Mer, drawing Iris and Cor into conversation, and Noctis gladly takes the distraction for what it is. He continues his morning duties unbothered, maneuvering easily around his three guests, and then makes himself lunch as the sun rises to its’ highest point.

He thinks he surprises them when he pushes a plate of sandwiches in their hands along with bottled water. “I made tuna sandwiches,” he says. He doesn’t look them in the eye. “You can, um, come inside to eat. If you want.”

“We would love to,” Iris smiles, slow and bright. Cor and Nyx follow them inside like protective shadows. Like Noctis is someone worth protecting.

He doesn’t think an abandoned child needs much protection. Noctis can count the number of people who wish him harm on one hand. He wonders if all Mer are this protective, this odd. Those academic papers certainly never discussed this.

 

*

 

Noctis gains three new roommates. There’s a joke in there somewhere.  

They don’t always stay the night, because there’s a time limit to how long a Mer can stay in their human shift without increasing the risk of health issues, and sometimes they don’t appear for days. But Noctis knows they’re there—lurking, at the very least, in the waters that surround the cliffside that he lives on.

Noctis isn’t bothered by their company.

The lighthouse had always seemed too quiet, too _big_ , for just him and his crops and his fish, so the three Mer are a welcomed change. He sometimes senses other Mer in the distance, watching and observing him whenever he goes to the lighthouse or fishes on Thursday evenings. If he opens his windows, he can hear them converse amongst themselves sometimes. They never show themselves, though, so Noctis never brings attention to them.

There is safety in anonymity, after all.

Over the weeks that pass, Noctis has been able to understand Iris, Cor, and Nyx as the people they are. While Cor and, to an extent, Nyx, aren’t one for much conversation, Iris is an upbeat chatterbox. She never gets annoyed at his lack of reciprocation, not in the way that would’ve made his guardian irritated; she only gets a little sad, in a way Noctis isn’t sure he wants to figure out.

He does ask them questions sometimes, mostly when they’re in their human form as he only knows a few words and phrases in Mer. Most of the time, it’s Iris he questions mainly because he’s a little more comfortable around her than the others.

It’s not like Noctis means to make his discomfort and slight fear of the two men known, but they are observant (of course they’d be, given their positions in the Mer Kingdom), and they tailor their behavior to better suit Noctis. At first, they had kept their distance; a respectable one whereas Iris always seemed to be in his personal space, but not in an uncomfortable way.

Slowly, though, Noctis grew used to their presence. He flinches less when they moved too quickly, or he didn’t see their hands as they reached in his direction. He stopped staring at the ground whenever he spoke to them or they spoke to him; he hasn’t looked them in the eyes, not even Iris, but he has looked at their noses and, well—

It’s progress.

 _It’s been a year_ , Noctis reminds himself every time he sees their expressions when he flinches, when he shuts down and curls into himself. _Recovery doesn’t last a year_.

Recovery is not linear. It manifests in various ways.

He asks them all sorts of questions about their kingdom, about the gaps that he has about their culture and their history. He had always found the Mer to be fascinating, found them to be a wistful dream he could never obtain during his childhood, so they’ve quite the soft spot in his heart. It’s why he hopes to one day get an M.S. in Marine Biology.

He ignores the voice of doubt in his mind, the voice that inexplicably reminds him of his guardian, that says his career goal is a waste of time and money.

They indulge his questions, and there are some things they won’t answer, but, honestly, Noctis doesn’t care. Questions about the royal family, about their prince who shares his name, is met with a stony, painful silence, and Noctis never asks them that again after the first time, when it looked like Cor might have cried.

Noctis is not cruel, no matter how curious.

He’s peeling some potatoes for a stew now, and it looks like it’s Nyx’s turn to be in the house. The window’s open, so he hears the familiar trills of Iris and Cor as they roam by the lighthouse. There are other voices amongst them; Mer Noctis does not know and might never meet. Nyx helps him with the potatoes, cutting and dicing his own pile with a deft hand.

Noctis watches the way his scales curl up his shoulders, around his neck. Some dot his forehead. They shimmer underneath the florescent lighting of his kitchen, blue and green and a pale, pretty lilac.

He clears his throat, waits for Nyx’s attention on him, and asks, “Can Mer eat, um, v-vegetables and, and fruits?”

“We can,” Nyx explains. “A group of us go on land to get them for the whole place and use magic to preserve them while underwater. My little sister is quite fond of, ah, strawberries.”

Noctis flicks a wet piece of potato skin off his hand and hums.

“May I ask why?” When Noctis blinks, Nyx continues, “Why the interest?”

Noctis shrugs. “I think it’s a stereotype that all Mer eat are, like, fish and coral, or whatever, so I was just curious.”

Nyx snorts and curls his lip. “Coral? Who would eat _coral?”_

Noctis laughs, a bright sound that makes Nyx stumble with his knife. He understands—they haven’t really heard him laugh before. “Dunno,” Noctis replies once his chuckles recede. “Perhaps it’s a savory snack?”

Nyx chuckles and goes back to his pile of potatoes. They peel and cut them together in tandem, and soon Noctis has them boiling with the rest of the stew. Iris comes back inside at some point, chattering about _you’ll never guess what some trainee did today during Crowns’ training, Nyx_ ; Cor follows after her and asks Noctis if he wants help with the stew. Noctis thinks he can consider this progress. For whom or what, he isn’t sure.

But. Progress.

Progress is good.

 

*

 

Noctis remembers being smaller than he is now—younger, if only by a year or two—trembling as he sat down at that adorned table that haunts his dreams, in front of the man that could easily destroy his entire world ( ~~and confidence and self-esteem and~~ ) with a single utterance, and hesitantly asks for the one thing he has only ever truly wanted.

“I . . . I would like to m-move out . . ..”

“Oh?” The man speaks, a glint in his eyes that makes him shiver. Noctis almost wants to swallow the words back down his throat. He doesn’t though; he won’t take them back because then it’ll look like he doesn’t really want this. “My little guppy wishes to leave the reef, then?”

Confused as he is by the terminology, Noctis plows forward and nods. The man tilts his head, considering, and then observes Noctis in tense silence for a few minutes. It’s the most harrowing minutes of Noctis’s life.

“Let’s make a deal, then, hmm? If my little guppy can live a year with no trouble, then I will leave you to your devices.”

Noctis agrees to the terms. Though elated, he can’t help but feel like he’s signed a contract with an eldritch horror he just so happens to live with.

 

*

 

Saturday mornings, after he’s fed the strays, turned off the lighthouse light, and looked after his crops and garden, is for TV. Noctis has a small one, nothing fancy or expensive. He doesn’t have HBO or Netflix or whatever streaming site is “the big deal”; he has the generic channels. He favors the ones that has cooking shows and competitions.

Iris likes watching TV with him. It’s always quiet and peaceful on Saturday mornings, in Cape Caem. His evenings are spent by the fishing docks, where, as always, he fishes until it becomes too dark for him to see.

Noctis prefers cooking channels.

Iris is a fan of reality television.

Her favorite show involves wedding dresses, for some reason, but Noctis finds himself getting sucked into the dramatics of a bride finding her perfect dress, of the entourage she brings disapproving of her choices to the point where she cries. Noctis can relate to that.

Cor joins them this Saturday morning, and he raises an eyebrow when Iris eagerly chooses the channel to watch. _Say Yes to the Dress_ is on back-to-back for most of the day.

Noctis exhales as he settles down on his couch, right next to Cor. The man tenses a little, surprised at Noctis’s choice of seat. He normally would’ve curled up on his armchair, blanket a comfortable weight around his shoulders. Iris is sprawled out on the rug, feet kicked in the air, but she, too, sends a glance back at Noctis. It’s full of concern and support.

Noctis feels touched, a bit more courageous.

During a commercial break, he finds himself opening his mouth. While his voice is little more than a whisper, an utterance, it still comes out. He’s still heard. Progress, he tells himself. It is not a straight, clean-cut line. “Cor?”

Cor makes a noise in lieu of a verbal response.

Noctis picks at the bare threads on his blanket. “Um . . .,” he pauses, exhales. Pulls another thread. “Um . . .  can I ask why, um, you’re here . . .?” At Cor’s slow blink, Noctis blanches and hurries to add: “N-Not that, that I’m saying you should, um, leave or anything, but, but, but you’re the Marshal, right? You . . . aren’t you . . . busy?” he finishes, almost lamely, and sorely wishes he had not opened his mouth.

_Make No Trouble._

The edges of Cor’s lips twitch into an amused half-smile. The deep reds of his scales look like some sort of warning, but Noctis, strangely, isn’t terrified. He is safe here. “You’re correct in that I have many duties as Marshal,” Cor explains, and Noctis listens attentively. He always does when he learns more about the Mer. “But this is important as well.”

He almost doesn’t want to ask, but he does. “Why? I’m just . . . Noctis.”

Iris’s voice floats to his ears. “Not to the Mer.”

Noctis wraps a loose string around his thumb. “But . . ..” Something bitter sprawls over his tongue, pools into his mouth. He fails to swallow it down. “I’m not—I’m not your prince.”

It’s a discussion they’ve had various times before. Each time, the Mer don’t believe him. Each time, the seed of doubt settles its roots deeper inside of Noctis.

Cor hums.

The bridal show returns.

 

*

 

Some nights, he dreams. They aren’t always nightmares. Sometimes, they are filled with light and warmth; with the feeling of surrounded by water, but there’s no danger in drowning . . . Noctis has never been safer. He wakes from those dreams crying. A ball of warmth and love and adoration curled tight in the middle of his ribcage, pressed against his lungs, but he knows it’s just a dream.

Most nights are for nightmares. They occupy in the space of his childhood home, curled in the crevices of the looming mansion he learned to walk in. He walks those halls, smaller than he has ever been, small like he always feels he is, listening to the harrowing echo of that cultured voice, of the soft demands and critiques of his person. He’s always walking towards that voice, in hope that it will make him feel warm and loved.

~~He knows it’s just a dream~~

He wakes from those empty.

 

*

 

He is a year and some days old when his family abandon him.

 

*

 

Noctis locks up both the lighthouse and his house; it’s not like anyone would break in, there’s not much to steal, not that they’d get far what with the three Mer currently chilling by the docks, but it’s a habit his guardian instilled in him when he first moved to Cape Caem. _Don’t cause trouble_ , Noctis echoes in his mind before he pulls on his coat and makes his way to Prompto’s.

There are a few people in Prompto’s odds-and-ends shop, most of them travelers and tourists who took the wrong turn to Galdin Quay, but there a few locals that greet Noctis warmly when he steps into the warmth of the store.

He gravitates to Loqi, one of Prompto’s employees that he feels remotely comfortable around, and he absentmindedly points his pen where the stairs that lead to Prompto’s apartment are hidden. “He’s up there,” he says as a greeting, and then makes a bubble with his gum.

“Thanks,” Noctis mutters, always awkward when it came to conversations, and wastes little time in making his way to Prompto’s little, but always, always welcoming, one-bedroom apartment.

He knows that by doing this he’s breaking the _Make No Trouble_ rule, and he knows his guardian is going to find out somehow, but this isn’t something Noctis can handle on his own. It’s not like it’s a bad harvest, or the light needs brightening; it’s not as if there’s a leak in the roof or slight flooding from one of Ramuh’s storms.

Magic isn’t something you take lightly.

Prompto’s bent over a book when he creeps inside the apartment, and there are all sorts of things floating around him—a feather, two other miniature sized books (they look like mini, leather-bound journals), a pen, and a clear potion bottle. White wisps curl around them. It’s a familiar sight for Prompto’s apartment, so he doesn’t blink, doesn’t ask.

As always, before he even speaks, Prompto greets him.

“Noct! I didn’t know you were coming today!”

Noctis raises the basket of carrots and other vegetables he’d picked that morning. “Um. Brought this morning’s harvest,” he starts, setting the basket down on the coffee table, and bites his lip. “Um. Sorry for, um, not calling ahead.”

Prompto waves away his worries. “It’s no biggie, I was just teasing,” Prompto’s grin is genuine and warm, but it falters at the expression Noctis wears. “Everything okay?”

Noctis tries to swallow. It doesn’t work.

“I need help,” he manages to say right before he drowns himself in tears. “I—I need—.”

“Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay.” Prompto wraps him into a tight embrace. “I’m here. I’m going to help. Shh . . . shh . . . it’s going to be okay, now.”

Noctis comes back to himself slowly; wrapped up in one of Prompto’s heavier blankets, a mug of hot chocolate in his hands, charmed to be a temperature that was both soothing but wouldn’t burn his hands. Prompto’s curled up beside him, knitting a sweater from the looks of it; the needles are golden, silver-tipped, and Noctis doesn’t have to hear to know that Prompto’s charming the hell out of it.

“Prom, I . . ..”

The words stick in the middle of his throat, a persistent ball that refuses relief. This happens most times, when Noctis tries to talk and engage in normal conversations. The words form, but never fall. They stay perched in his mouth, poised almost perfectly, and melt back into nonexistence.

“It’s okay,” Prompto says, and his smile is warm and genuine and soft. Before Noctis moved to Cape Caem, no one had ever smiled at him so kindly before. Well, his guardian did, but those were rare, and often left Noctis feeling as though his skin tried to crawl off his bones. “You don’t need to explain yourself if you’re not comfortable or ready, okay? I’m not going anywhere.”

The breath escapes Noctis almost entirely. “There’s something wrong with me, Prom.”

The needles slow down, and Noctis starts talking.

He doesn’t talk about _everything_ , of course, because Noctis had never been the sort to word-vomit his entire life on someone else’s lap, but he trusts Prompto; trusts him implicitly, irrevocably, and he knows his trust is reciprocated.

He’s only known Prompto for a year, but it feels like he’s known him forever.

So, he talks about Iris, and Cor, and Nyx, and he adds in tidbits from his own childhood, behaviors he thought humans regularly did because no one around him treated it as peculiar or _wrong_ , just little quirks that made Noctis who he was. He talks about titles, about _Prince_ and _Your Highness_ , and about the way the three Mer look at him when they think he’s unaware of their gazes.

He talks until his throat sores and aches, until his voice crackles and croaks from long use. He talks and Prompto’s knitting needles stop moving, he talks and Prompto’s expression slowly grows darker and darker and _darker_ , he talks and he talks and he talks and—

Gently, like he’d shatter, Prompto wipes Noctis’s tears.

When he’s finished, Prompto breathes heavily and, for a good while, says nothing; letting the information sink in.

“Okay,” Prompto says, finally, and he picks up his needles. “Okay. That man . . . your guardian, that is . . . what is his name?”

Noctis swallows, hunches over into a tight ball. Some hot chocolate spills onto the floor from his movement. “Ardyn I-Izunia. He adopted me when . . . when I was abandoned.”

Prompto grips one his needles so tight, it breaks in half. Noctis makes a startled noise in the back of his throat.

“Of course,” Prompto says, sounding so weary and tired, but unsurprised. He sounds . . . he sounds like he was expecting this. “Of _course_ , it’s him.”

Noctis blinks. “Um.”

Prompto shakes his head, lips pressed to a thin, severe line. “Another day,” he promises after a pensive thought, and then fixes his needles with a short spell. “Noct. Give me some more examples of your childhood, please? Behavior that you think might’ve been odd . . . compared to another child.”

He worries his bottom lip but acquiesces to the order. Even if he didn’t want to, he wouldn’t have dared disobeyed Prompto.

(A year is not enough time to overwrite the rules engrained in his skin)

“I see. I _see_.” Prompto’s pursed lips grows deeper, more pronounced and severe the more Noctis talks. He almost falters, once he sees the thunderous rage festering in Prompto’s eyes, but after a soft encouragement to continue, he doesn’t. “What would you prefer—the band-aid method or a softer approach?”

Noctis thinks about it for a moment. “Band-Aid.”

“You’ve been cursed,” Prompto replies bluntly. “Since toddlerhood, from what I can gather.”

Noctis nearly chokes on his hot chocolate. He settles for staring, wide-eyed, at Prompto instead.

“There’s always been a weird sort of magical residue around you,” Prompto continues, though he takes care to pat Noctis’s back. Noctis coughs and sputters. “And some of your habits didn’t make much sense to me, but that’s because I originally thought of you as, well, a human, and then, later on as . . . a descendant of a water dweller—I’ve met a few of those, before—but, no . . . no, this makes much more sense than my previous theories.”

Noctis thinks he resembles a fish out of water. There’s a joke in there. Probably. “How do you know? You didn’t . . . aren’t there _spells_ for that or something?”

Prompto considers him quietly, and then his eyes crinkle in amusement. “Oh, Noct. You’ve no idea who I am, do you?”

“You own a pawnshop in some seaside town barely anyone visits,” Noctis deadpans, and Prompto releases a sharp bark of laughter.

“You got me there,” he says as he threads two pieces of yarn together. “You got me there.”

Noctis makes a noise in the back of his throat, and Prompto pats his head gently. It isn’t patronizing, not like when his guardian does it, but he still makes another disgruntled noise.

“I’m not your dime-a-dozen witch, baby,” Prompto tells him, amused but so, so fond and warm, it makes Noctis’s toes curl. “Long story short, I have . . . some fancy abilities, compared to your average witch.”

“Abilities?” Noctis tilts his head. “Like what?”

“I have many,” Prompto admits, a little mischievous, but there’s that soft gleam in his eyes that makes Noctis stay relaxed and comfortable. “One of them is being able to see curses without the aid of a spell, but I can use one if you’d feel more comfortable.”

Noctis chews on the inside of his mouth. “If you wouldn’t mind . . .?”

“Never,” says Prompto, and then, after he sets his knitting materials aside, stands.

The spell is short and quiet, and Noctis glows a soft lilac once it holds and settles. Noctis knows very well what that color means.

 _I’m cursed_ , he blinks. Aloud, he says, “What . . . what do we do now?”

“Now?” Prompto smiles, wide and toothy. It’s not an unkind smile, but Noctis still shudders. “Now, we do research.”

 

*

 

When he returns back to the lighthouse, the moon has been among the stars for quite some time. Nyx waits for him in the living room when he enters his little cottage; Iris and Cor most likely back in their kingdom. It looks like it’s Nyx’s turn to guard him during the night, even though Noctis has said multiple times that as he’s not a prince, he doesn’t _need_ to be protected and guarded while he slept.

It’s becoming a usual thing for them to ignore him whenever he says that.

“Hi.”

“You’ve had a busy day,” Nyx remarks, eyeing the dark underline of Noctis’s eyes and the tear marks he felt too tired to wash away. “Is everything alright, my P . . . Noctis?”

“Yeah,” Noctis says, and promptly ignores the way his voice cracks. “Yeah, things are . . . fine.”

“If you say so.” Nyx gives him a doubtful look, and then points to where a plate of food awaits him on the counter. “Are you hungry? I made a mean mac n’ cheese for dinner.”

Noctis eats half of it, and he does agree it’s tasty. He’s never really had much macaroni and cheese, except when he was still very, very small. His guardian thought it too plebian for their pallet.

Nyx continues giving him concerned glances, growing more pronounced at the amount of food Noctis hasn’t eaten. Noctis doesn’t know how to explain that he doesn’t really eat that much anyway. He’s pretty sure it wouldn’t sit well with Nyx.

“Are you sure you’re alright, Noctis?”

Noctis makes a noise in response and barricades himself in his bedroom for the rest of the night. He gets ready for bed quietly and listens to the way Nyx moves about his home in comfortable familiarity. A part of him wants to go downstairs and ask Nyx the notebook of questions he had about the Mer; ask him about the Lucis Caelum family, about the king and the queen, about the prince he shared a name with.

He wants to ask, to _know_ , what sort of curses affected the Mer.

And _how_.

 _A curse,_ Noctis repeats in the safety of his mind. A fierce prickle crawls up his calf, and he thinks he’s going to faint. He doesn’t, only curls his arms around his waist and breathes. Things and moments, little happenstances and behaviors, left unexplained by childhood click into place.

Noctis stares at his reflection and thinks of how small he is compared to other teens in Cape Caem, thinks of the way his guardian liked to keep him bundled in the protective walls of their manor, only interacting with those hand-picked and safe. _A curse_ , he thinks again.

He wonders, briefly, what his guardian is going to think of this.

 _He’s probably going to laugh_ , Noctis thinks with no short amount of fond exasperation.

 

*

 

His guardian does not laugh.

His guardian does not even speak, only observes Noctis with a gaze he can’t decipher. “Oh, guppy,” the man finally says after a moment of stifling silence. “You truly think a _witchborn_ cares for you?”

Noctis doesn’t know what to think. He doesn’t even know if he’s breathing.

“I . . . I don’t understand . . .?”

“You’re far more naïve and gullible than I remembered, little guppy,” Ardyn comments, lightly, as if his words do not pierce and shred Noctis’s very skin. Ardyn makes a contemplative noise, eyes narrowed in thought. “Perhaps, it is time for you to return home.”

Noctis tenses. “I—I’m doing well at Cape Caem, sir.”

Ardyn quirks an eyebrow. “Are you truly?”

“Yes.”

Noctis talks about how the harvest is going, and how he barters with the locals every Monday and Friday, because those mornings is when he picks through his field for what’s ripe and ready to be sold; he tells him about his garden, and how the lighthouse light is a bit tricky to deal with, but he manages (thank you, Google).

He talks about the simple and monotonous routine he has adopted like a second skin, but he says nothing of the three Mer who have made themselves comfortable in the boundary of Cape Caem. His guardian had a peculiar distaste toward the Mer, always discouraged Noctis’s love of their culture and history in quiet, smothering ways.

When Noctis finishes, Ardyn has his cheek pressed against his fist.

“My, _my_.” The man says after a moment of thought. “You’ve quite the busy days, my guppy.”

Noctis doesn’t dare breathe. It is clear Ardyn is not finished talking, and Noctis knows the consequences of interrupting far too well.

“But I am still of the opinion you should find yourself back here—daddy has missed you terribly, my dear.”

Noctis isn’t sure he’s masking his fear well. He inhales, gathering what little resolve he has in the face of something he can only symbolize as a wolf, and exhales. “I’m . . . I am h-happy at Cape Caem, father, please, don’t . . ..”

Ardyn levels a stern glare at him. Noctis barely resists shrinking into his seat, even though he knows if he hadn’t resisted the urge, he would have been in even more trouble for distasteful table manners.

“I very well will do as I please, little guppy,” his guardian states in an imperious tone of voice. “Especially when it concerns your health and wellbeing.”

The walls shiver in place. The floor trembles. Noctis can’t breathe, and he’s going to either faint, cry, or expel his breakfast all over Ardyn’s elegant, priceless dining table. Or do all three. By his guardian’s expression, Noctis knows he isn’t hiding his emotions well. He thinks he whines, chokes on his very breath.

“You can’t just . . .,” he tries to say, but his voice keeps breaking, keeps quieting with each breath he takes. “You can’t do this, I—.”

“I assure you, dear guppy, that as your father, I _can_ , in fact, ‘do this’.” Ardyn leans forward, hands splayed on the mahogany table.  Noctis does his best to maintain his posture. He’s not really sure it’s working out. “I find it alarming you are allowing an insipid, low-level, uneducated _magician_ tell you such silly things, that you believe—.”

Ice digs a burning chasm in his lungs. “ _Don’t talk about Prompto like that—.”_

Ardyn rises to a towering height, a terrifying image that makes Noctis want bury himself underneath the ground. The backs of his eyes burn. Words and strength disappear. “You will not take that tone with _me_ , Noctis Izunia,” his guardian speaks quietly. It would have been better if he had shouted in a booming tremor, because then Noctis could have an actual excuse if he started crying. “Remember the hand which raised you when your birth family simply cast you aside as if you were little more than rotten fruit.”

Noctis shrivels like a flower in a drought.

They stay like that for a while; suspended in the tension, in the storm of emotions that press and press and shriek under Noctis’s skin. His heart hammers a deafening tune in his ears. He thinks the floor is going to pull from underneath his feet. Some parts of his legs itch uncomfortably. The shoes he wears on his feet pinch the bottom of his toes.

Ardyn sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose, and Noctis flinches. He regains his composure quickly, straightens his posture, and places his trembling hands on his lap perfectly. He must give Ardyn little more to punish.

“There is no curse placed upon you, my little guppy,” his guardian informs him calmly, resolute and firm in a way that reminds Noctis of Iris, when she looked at him and breathed out his name . . . his name that he had never spoken in her presence before. “There is no curse at all. You are a little human boy, if, albeit, much too fond of the ocean than I am comfortable with . . . and you will always _be_ a little human boy.”

Noctis does not speak. He does not breathe.

Ardyn cups Noctis’s chin, lifts up his head, and stares directly into his eyes. Noctis has no hope of looking away, not if he wished to stack on another lecture about the importance of eye-contact onto the already massive list of disobedience he has accomplished in little more than an hour back inside his childhood house.

“Do you understand me, Noctis?” Ardyn asks quietly. There’s steel there, in his voice; something indescribable, something that makes anxiety turn the pit of Noctis’s stomach into nearly unbearable knots. “There is no curse.”

“Please,” Noctis tries again, but there’s a rattling echo in his lungs. Ardyn stares him down, and he’s almost to the point of violent shakes. He thinks his teeth are going to start chattering if he doesn’t calm down. “Please, if you’d listen . . ..”

“I am listening, my dear,” Ardyn says, very gently, like Noctis is some wounded animal he discovered in the gardens. After a moment, he drops Noctis’s chin and pats his head as a means of comfort. Noctis does not feel comforted, but still he leans into the warmth like a starved waif. “ _You_ are the one who is not listening.”

Noctis swallows audibly. Sniffles.

“Come now, guppy, there’s no need to be so sensitive.” Ardyn frowns at him, gaze piercing, and Noctis quiets. The fight bleeds out of him as if it had never been there in the first place. The little revolt packs up its bags and leaves. “You’ve gotten much more rebellious than I am comfortable with, my little guppy. I’m not sure Cape Caem is the right place for you to thrive.”

“But it is,” Noctis speaks, but his voice is so small, he sounds little more than a petulant toddler who wanted dessert for dinner. His eyes burn when Ardyn chuckles, a low sound that makes Noctis shiver in place.

“Oh, my dear, how could a child know what is best for them?”

His fifteenth year is about to end, but Noctis does not feel joy at this fact. He has never felt smaller, never felt so little, before in his entire life.

 

*

 

Aranea drives him back to Cape Caem a week later. It’s a quiet affair. It’s clear she wants to talk about something, but she refrains. Noctis says nothing, only looks at the passing scenery. When he steps inside his home, the Mer aren’t there, but traces and echoes of their existence are around him. There are clean dishes he hadn’t used on his drying rack; his laundry is clean and neatly folded in a basket on his armchair. The place is swept and dusted. The trash taken out.

A small pile of mail waits for him in the middle of his table, but he ignores it. A sticky note penned in Iris’s handwriting is there, too, and Noctis ignores that as well.

He still can’t breathe quite right, either.

Noctis hates the way his guardian makes him feel, hates the way his skin prickles and aches, and tries to peel off his bone whenever he breathes in the air that surrounds the manor he grew up in. He soaks in the bath for an hour, trying to rejuvenate, trying to get rid of the echoes of negativity scouring his skin. It doesn’t work.

He dresses quietly. There are no minders echoing his steps every second. There is no one who pulls out clothes he dislikes wearing and makes him wear it. There is no one to discuss his poor posture, or the way he never looks anyone in the eye, or the way he now talks with an accent that could only belong to southern Cleigne.

~~There are no hands seeking to harm.~~

He wears comfortable cutoff pants and an oversized sweater with a hood. It has thumbholes. Some parts of the fabric have faded due to wear, but it’s still soft, still a secure weight. Everything Noctis wishes to hide, it does it well. Noctis sighs in content and relief when he slips it on and feels like he’s coming back to himself if only a little. He doesn’t put on shoes when he steps out of his house. He’d never been fond of those.

It’s still sunrise, he notes, little more than eight in the morning. Noctis turns on his heel and makes his way down a route he has walked various times. It’s instinct at this point.

He should feel safest in the place that watched him take his first steps. His safest place is nestled above a pawnshop.

And that’s where he heads.

Like he always does, Loqi points to the staircase when he enters. He pops his bubble twice, and that’s sort of his way of saying hello and welcome back. Somehow, Noctis manages a smile in his direction, but he knows it resembles a grimace when Loqi looks at him and snorts.  

This time, Prompto’s hovering over a self-stirring cauldron in the kitchen. Purple and blue fumes waft from the pot, and Prompto hums satisfactorily after a few more stirs. He takes it off the heater, sets it on the counter, and turns off the stove.

Like always, Prompto greets him before he can even open his mouth. “Noctis! I hope you had a good journey back home?”

“It . . . yeah,” Noctis says after a too long pause.

Prompto quirks an eyebrow, eyes drinking in his appearance. “Are you okay, honey?”

“I . . .,” Noctis begins, and then swallows. His hands curl around his sleeves when he whispers, “I don’t know.”

Prompto makes a noise, a concerned and worried sound, and ushers Noctis into the living room where, before he can do anything besides sit, he finds himself wrapped in that heavy blanket. Prompto smiles, pressing a light kiss to his forehead, and says, “I’ll be right back with some cocoa.”

The drink takes little time to prepare, what with magic speeding the process along, and soon they are both curled up on the couch. The TV is on low. Some movie about a werewolf and vampire fake-dating plays.

“Want to tell me what’s going on?” Prompto asks quietly. “You were gone without much notice, you know? Those Mer by the docks . . . we were all quite worried.”

“I . . . I . . . you’ll think me silly,” Noctis says, voice clogged and heavy with emotions he can barely name on a good day.

Prompto reaches for him, eyes soft and understanding, until Noctis is tucked against him. “Oh, baby, I would never think that of you.”

“But – but . . . I’m . . . my guardian, he—.” Noctis stops. The words are too difficult to form, too bundled for him to say, and frustrated tears press against his eyes. “He says you’re – you’re lying and, and that I’m . . . a fool for believing you.”

Prompto’s voice is calm and even. “And what do you believe?”

Noctis has spent seven whole days under a roof where he suffocates in place of breathing. Seven days spent in his guardian’s protective periphery, sitting through grueling lectures on what is proper and what isn’t, on the people he should trust and the people he should turn away. There were more lectures in there, on manners and more, but they had all blurred together near the end.

“I—.” Noctis closes his eyes. Shudders. “I don’t know.”

He is on a probation of sorts. He does not know if he will stay in Cape Caem.

“That’s alright, baby.” Prompto’s voice is soothing and washes over him like a gentle embrace. “It’d be selfish and harsh of me to expect you to believe the words of someone you’ve only known for a year over. . . the man who raised you.”

Noctis breathes, shakily, and tucks his head into the crevice of Prompto’s neck. Partly because it’s a place to hide, but also because Prompto never minds his tactile ways. In fact, Prompto _encourages_ his behavior.

Noctis isn’t stupid.

He graduated high school early, thanks to his abundance of tutors his guardian threw at him, and he has a phone. He has Google.

He knows what touch starvation is, and what it does to people.

But he and Prompto never talk about that, not really. Verbally, that is. As it is, Noctis unwinds and settles back into his skin. He feels more like a human, more like _himself_ , the longer he’s curled in Prompto’s embrace, halfway to sitting on his lap.

“I’m sorry,” Noctis murmurs against Prompto’s neck. “I . . . I don’t . . ..”

“It’s okay,” Prompto replies. He curls his fingers in Noctis’s hair, grounding him. “I’ve got you.”

Noctis exhales.

“It’s okay.”

_You can breathe now._

 

*

 

The Mer age differently. It’s a common fact of life, something as simple as _the sky is blue_. But it’s a sort of different that causes befuddlement amongst human circles, as most things about the Mer do. The Mer don’t follow the aging patterns of fish or other aquatic life, but they also don’t follow a humans’ lifespan either. Some Mer are able to live up to their thousands; some never see their early twenties. It’s entirely dependent on their environment, on their race. At least, that’s what humans assume.

The fact is that, technically, the Mer have two ages: the age when they are a Mer, and the age when they are a human.

The exact semantics is lost on humans, but some Mer age up when they are human and some age down. As a Mer, Iris is a healthy twenty-five-year-old; the Mer age of maturity, Noctis remembers, for Insomnia at least. As a human, she looks little more than a nineteen-year-old college student.

“Aging becomes murkier, the more time spent on land,” one of his childhood tutors had explained, indulging in Noctis’s almost incessant questions about the Mer, though they took care to answer away from Ardyn’s hearing range. “Alongside an abundance of health issues—the Mer aren’t meant to live as humans, after all—they tend to, ah, I believe instead of aging faster, they age _slower_. Lack of resources and nutrients, you see.”   

It makes sense, to Noctis at least. Other scientists disagree, and there are various academic journals and papers discussing the evolutional merits of such a process.

There are also various debates and forums about the time limit Mer can survive on land. Mer are only supposed to be on land for less than 7 hours a week, before the risk of health problems become too large to ignore.

Noctis doesn’t want to know what would happen to a Mer should they be on land for years. He doesn’t think he’d survive the knowledge.

 

*

 

Back in Cape Caem, Noctis adds research to his routine. He spends every other evening in Prompto’s apartment, the heavy blanket pressing against his spine as he surrounds himself with texts and scrolls, a notebook and ballpoint pen on his lap. At one point, his hands become stained with pink highlighter. Prompto has his own tasks to deal with, but he always makes time to explain whatever Noctis doesn’t understand, always nudges Noctis gently in the direction he thinks they should be going.

Noctis wants to try something, three weeks into their research. He thinks he knows where all this is going to go, but he needs to test his theory first. He’s on thin ice still with the _Make No Trouble_ rule, so he doesn’t call Aranea for a ride. That would make his guardian think he needs more care, that he isn’t _ready enough_ for life on his own.

Despite his love for the sea, Noctis does not know how to swim.

It mostly has to do with Ardyn, and the mans’ unexplained hatred of anything to do with bodies of water. Nonetheless, Noctis has not stepped into a body of water his entire life, whether said body were a kiddie pool or a lake or Galdin Sea. Even though he lives halfway across the country from his childhood manor, even though he has lived by himself for a year, Noctis abides by his guardians’ rules.

And that means: _no swimming_.

But Noctis has a theory. And to test that theory, he needs a large enough body of water. He blows a raspberry out of irritation, startling the stray cats he feeds. He sends them apologetic looks, and they give him unimpressed stares.

Something shimmery catches his gaze, and Noctis turns to see his fishing rod perched on the dock like it always is.

 _Ah_ , Noctis thinks, almost victoriously.

He’s found his body of water.

Once he’s finished with his morning chores, and there’s nothing more to do than a quick clean-up of the living room, Noctis trots down to the little beach. The three Mer are not there today, but that doesn’t bother Noctis. They have their own lives in their kingdom. He does not expect them to spend every waking moment in his proximity.

He still feels a little lost, however, at the lack of noise he’s grown used to, but he shakes the discomfort away. He breathes, gathers his strength, and steps into the sea. The water welcomes him as he steps deeper into its’ embrace. He only goes up to his waist, a little lower than that, as he has little confidence in his ability to not drown.

But. _But._

Something’s . . . wrong. Horribly, terribly _wrong._

The water doesn’t feel cool or warm or unpleasant. Nothing those online forums talked about, Noctis feels.

It burns.

The water _burns_.

A searing, blinding pain curls wraps around his entire body, even though he’s barely waist-deep in the water, and in the back of his mind, he knows it’s not supposed to hurt like this. It’s not supposed to _burn_ like this. It feels like his skin is being peeled off piece by piece, slow and unbearable.

 _MY CHILD_ , a voice booms. No, no there are various voices; blending together, echoing off one another. His head splits in half. His ears bleed. _MY BELOVED RETURNS._

In the distance, he hears someone scream. It’s a horrific sound, something you’d hear from graphic and realistic horror movies, something high-pitched yet guttural, full of suffering and misery. A sound that rips at the throats of whoever produced it.

Noctis knows he should move, knows he should _leave the water_ , but he can’t, he’s stuck, there’s a near irresistible pull alongside the inescapable burning. It beckons him further, while shrieks at him to leave. He’s at an impasse. He’s in too much agony to breathe.

_BELOVED._

He’s yanked out of the water, all-but thrown onto the docks. His fishing rod and bait box skid off the dock as Noctis becomes surrounded by people, by voices. His throat is raw, and sore, and he belatedly realizes that it was he who screamed so terribly. Noctis had been under the impression that his guardian snuffed out his ability to scream years ago.

_MY CHILD._

Darkness floats at the edges of his mind, a comfortable and familiar friend that Noctis greets eagerly. He remembers little after that.

 

*

 

Noctis floats. He aches. He dreams.

There are blank spots, fuzzy images and muted voices, but there are things that never change regardless of the scenery, of the vision. He is always underwater, but the water does not burn him; it wraps around him with a gentle, almost motherly touch. It brings him mischief as he swims through a coral reef. It carries him to safety whenever the darkened edges of something bigger, scarier, threaten his peace.

Noctis can count the number of places he feels safe on one hand. The sea had never been considered before.

Sometimes, Noctis has a tail and fins. He can’t really make out the features and detail of his own, but he knows it’s a gorgeous swirl of black, of blue, of silver. Sometimes, he has his legs. Most of the time, he is either left to his own devices or he is accompanied by Mer he cannot name nor properly make out, but he knows them, somehow; he follows the vibrations of their voices. He trusts them like he trusts Prompto.

His days are peaceful and quiet. Time does not pass here.

The Tide Mother visits him.

It’s as if a blocked connection between them had been dissolved. Her voice no longer booms, no longer screeches of the protective fury of a mother whose child had been taken from her safe grasp. It’s gentle, but still rough, but Noctis somehow expects it to be like that. The sea could be gentle, but anger it, and it becomes a force little can control.

 _My beloved,_ she speaks, the first time Noctis noticed her presence. He’s in some sort of garden, underwater of course, some sort of coral reef that takes his breath away. The Tide Mother— _Leviathan_ , Noctis corrects—curls and snakes around him in a manner that is both protective and hesitant. She does not know what to do with him.

Noctis does not speak and waits. He is very, very good at waiting.  

 _My beloved,_ Leviathan continues, _My Beloved Child._

“Tide Mother,” Noctis greets, and then blinks. He had meant to say Leviathan as was proper for a human to address an Astral. Only the Mer call Leviathan _Tide Mother_. They were the only one’s worthy, after all.

 _My Child, You Have Returned to Me,_ Leviathan says. She continues to circle around him, but Noctis does not feel dizzy. He does not feel unsafe. _But There is a Darkness . . . A Stain on My Beloved Child . . . It Should Not Exist . . ._

“I’m sorry,” Noctis says quietly.

 _Your Memory Rejects You,_ Leviathan goes on as if he hadn’t spoken. _The Stain Should Not Exist._

“Okay,” says Noctis. 

_What Should Be Mine Has Been Stolen._ Leviathan’s scales shivers, as if irritated. _Stolen . . . Stained . . . Cursed . . . By The Accursed . . . The Adagium . . . But My Beloved Child Has Returned . . ._

Noctis says nothing.

 _My Beloved Child . . . You Must Remember . . .,_ she says, and he thinks she sounds sad, grieving. _You Have A Stain . . . It Should Not Exist . . ._

Noctis exhales. He thinks it is sunrise. Time does not pass here.

 

*

 

He doesn’t quite run away when he’s twelve, but it’s close. He sneaks out of the manor and into the neighboring town. His feet guide him to a library. It’s a long walk, and by the time he reaches the threshold, the pain in his legs is almost unbearable. But he has a mission. He has a _goal_. He has a time limit, and he can’t rest yet.

He manages to ask a librarian for where they keep their myths and tales, and he’s directed to second floor of the library. He almost screams at the sight of the stairs, but he makes it through. When he steps into the section, he already knows what to look for, the name of the tales whispered to him by Aranea during a rare moment they were alone together.

Aranea suggested _The Little Mermaid_ and _Rapunzel_ , tales created before more information about the Mer’s culture and history became public knowledge.

He gets sucked into the worlds easily. He can’t help but compare his living situation to theirs—Ariel, living under the roof of an overprotective father until she gives her voice in exchange for freedom. Rapunzel, unable to leave her home by the one who raised her, only for her to discover her heritage as a princess of a Mer kingdom; stolen as a babe by the same woman who brushed her hair every night before bed.

He’s a little uncomfortable, though, by the implications he thinks Aranea is sending him. Ardyn was his guardian. Noctis hadn’t been kidnapped.

He certainly isn’t some prince, either.

 

*

 

Noctis comes back to awareness quietly. Prompto’s weighted blanket presses against him, but he knows he’s not in Prompto’s apartment. Gingerly, he sits upright, still a little sore and numb, and observes the state of his bedroom.

There’s a chair at his bedside, a blanket thrown over its’ back. His window curtains are opened, and Noctis sees the moon. It’s full. There’s a bowl of cool water on his bedside table, a damp rag crumbled next to it. His alarm clock blinks the date and time. He has been unconscious for a full day.  

He doesn’t feel gross and dirty, given the clean pajamas he wears and the lotion that he smells on his skin. Someone probably bathed him, or Prompto cast a cleaning spell at him, but he’s grateful, nonetheless. He feels like himself. Sort of.

The muted rise of chatter, and the light he sees from under his door, speaks the existence of guests. Careful of the ache that pinches the inside of his bone, Noctis climbs out bed. As an afterthought, he wraps the blanket around his shoulders. He doesn’t like shoes, hates the texture and the feel of them on the soles of his feet, but he slides on the bedroom slippers Aranea once got him for his birthday a few years ago. He has grown little, so it still fits. The coldness of the floor outweighs the discomfort of his feet.

The chatter doesn’t cease as he exits his room, but that’s because Noctis knows how to be silent, knows how to disappear in plain sight. They won’t see him unless he wants them to. His house in Cape Caem is _his_ domain.

At the foot of the stairs, he watches the peculiar group huddled in his living room.

There are small mountains of texts sprawled everywhere, but there seems to be a method to the chaos, a system of sorts as Prompto and Loqi pick through it with ease. Iris, Cor, and Nyx are familiar sights in his living room, but there are two other faces Noctis doesn’t know—

But that isn’t quite right.

A deep pang resonates inside him. It floats, restless and flustered, before it settles in his heart.

Noctis knows those faces. He knows those voices. _Ignis Scientia_ , he says in his mind as he watches the sandy blond man flip through another text deftly. His eyes drift to the taller, dark-haired man that resembles Iris closely; he wears no shirt, baring his tattoos and scars for the world to observe. _Gladiolus Amicitia._

So deep and occupied are they in their conversations and research, they don’t notice Noctis float inside the kitchen. They don’t hear him make himself hot chocolate with the Keurig Aranea had gifted him upon moving to Cape Caem, secretly, of course, as Ardyn disliked it when Aranea showed any sort of emotional attachment to Noctis.

They don’t notice his presence even after he’s made himself comfortable on his armchair, feet tucked underneath him (out of those gods-awful _shoes_ ), weighted blanket a comfortable security around his shoulders and most of his body. He takes a few careful sips of his hot chocolate, deliberates the merit of saying nothing and having them notice him at their own pace, and then catches sight of the book Iris is stubbornly trudging her way through.

“Oh, that book has some good resources,” Noctis says, and then flinches when Iris shrieks, drops the book, and whirls around in shock. His voice is scratchy, and his throat feels like Ardyn made him recite some textbook fourteen times, but he doesn’t think he sounds _that_ bad.

“Noctis . . .,” Prompto breathes out, trembling hands pressing against his shoulders. “Noctis, baby, when did . . . did you walk down the stairs yourself?”

“Yeah.” Noctis blinks up at Prompto, stares into the purple-blue irises full of concern and worry and grief and— “Was I not supposed to?”

“No,” Prompto says, but he doesn’t sound harsh, though his voice shakes a little. “Typically, one doesn’t just . . . walk down the stairs after . . ..”

Noctis makes an understanding noise in the back of his throat. He then notices all the eyes on him, and his own drops to his hot chocolate. “Sorry,” he says, but his voice is barely audible.

“It’s okay,” Prompto all but breathes out, pressing his cheek against Noctis’s, who practically melts against the touch. “It’s okay, don’t . . . don’t worry.”

Noctis hums.

“I believe introductions are in order,” Ignis states after a moment, after he’s finished drinking in Noctis’s features, after a good amount of his shock has faded from his eyes. He and Gladiolus look at him like how Nyx and Cor did, back when they’d first met, like he’s something precious and fragile, someone worth dying for.

Noctis, as always, ignores the revelation, and sips his hot chocolate. “Hi,” he greets in a mumble. “’M Noctis.”

Ignis fixes the glasses perched on his nose. It makes Noctis squint a little—Mer had vision issues? “Ignis Scientia, your Highness,” he bows, straightens, and then motions to Gladiolus. “Gladiolus Amicitia. It is a . . . pleasure to be of your acquaintance again.”

Gladiolus says nothing, only looks at him as if he would disappear if he wasn’t. Noctis takes another sip before he clears his throat.

Their attention, as if it’d really left, is on him immediately. He shrinks a little, but Prompto’s hand is still on his shoulder, though he’d moved to stand beside him, and Noctis exhales easily.

 _You’re safe here_ , Noctis tells himself.

“I’m cursed, apparently,” Noctis says to his, quite frankly, eyesore of a rug, “but that doesn’t mean I’m the prince you’re looking for.”

Noctis had been cruelly abandoned in some parking lot near Leide, discovered by traveling hunters who then took him to the nearest HQ. Him sharing the same name as a missing Mer prince does not change those facts of life.

It sits on his shoulder, far heavier than the weighted blanket.

_Your Memory Rejects You._

Noctis blinks.

“I see it’s a work in progress,” Ignis says evenly, after a beat.

Iris is back to sorting through the book she’d dropped, but her lips are quirked in a smile that’s not sad, but it isn’t happy either. Cor remains as unreadable as ever.

Noctis tilts his head as Nyx snorts and mutters, “You’ve no idea.”

 

*

 

A week since he, well, proved his theory correct (in a manner he wasn’t truly suspecting), Ignis and Gladiolus— _Gladio,_ Noctis corrects, remembering the man requesting he be called that by Noctis and the others—have slotted themselves into his routine almost effortlessly. It is like they have been there his entire life.

He’s much more nervous around Gladio than he is around Ignis, though that’s only because of his taller stature and muscled size. Iris had once giggled and called Gladio a behemoth and, well, she isn’t exactly incorrect. Noctis can tell his distance hurts the other, like it had with Nyx and Cor, but he just—

He needs time.

To adjust.

They understand, though, and they respect the silent boundaries he places via body language and mumbled words, gaze cast down to the sometimes sandy and rocky terrain of Cape Caem. He grows accustomed to them, the more time they spend in his periphery. He discovers Ignis has a love for cooking and baking that rivals Coctura from Galdin, and Takka from Hammerhead, and, well, perhaps any chef Noctis knows (which is . . . not a lot). He learns that while Gladio might have a gruff exterior, he’s quiet and careful with his words (not, Noctis amends, when he’s emotional), and he has a soft spot for anything with a romance.

Noctis thinks he would have liked to grow up around them, had his family not abandoned him, had he not been placed under a curse that trapped his legs.

His second year at Cape Caem trudges by with little affair. He wakes up one morning, and its New Years. Snow does not fall in Cleigne, at least not in the area where Cape Caem resides, thankfully, so all he worries about is the light chill in the morning and evening air. It’s sometimes cold enough for Cor to grumble whenever he walks about with no shoes.

There’s a message one morning from his guardian. Noctis eagerly awaits to grow spring and summer fruit and vegetables as it nears the end of March. The message leaves a bitter aftertaste in his mouth, though.

He’s still on probation. His guardian still deciding whether he should continue to live in Caem or live under his careful eye.

_Make no trouble, little guppy. Remember that._

Noctis tends to his garden and goes over everything he knows so far.

He’s cursed. He’s a Mer—or, at the very least, a descendant with Mer blood. It explains his intolerance for anything that isn’t, well, _fish_ , though he knows that Mer have a varied diet and they don’t solely exist on aquatic life, so perhaps that’s just a Noctis thing. He barely likes vegetables or fruit, but he eats them anyway; as if he had a choice in the matter, truly, and Ardyn would _know_ if Noctis didn’t have a diet up to his standards.

Anyway.

The curse has blocked his ability to shift, and the backlash has built up enough that it physically harms Noctis to be in water.

 _Perhaps,_ he wonders as he plants a few new bulbs, _that’s why Ardyn’s so insistent I never swam . . ._

He knows now that he’s been cursed for a while, possibly since his birth, as it’s seeped into his skin; deep in the framework of his soul. It makes Prompto purse his lips and hold him tighter most days as they research safe alternatives (and, you know, the curse _or_ the counter curse). Despite Ardyn’s insistence otherwise, Noctis knows the curse is there. He is aware of it now, and it presses heavy against his ribcage.

“There’s a lot of energy bundled up in you,” Prompto explained one evening, when Noctis asked why they couldn’t just . . . cast some spells instead of piling themselves with research that looks, most days, like they’re going in eternal circles. “Not all of it good, but not all of it bad. The backlash of just – body slamming you with spell after spell, hoping it’ll work, will only harm you _more_. I want you safe, Noctis, and I want to rid this curse without causing irreparable harm, you know?”

“That’s thoughtful,” Noctis had said.

Prompto smiled and poked him where he was most ticklish, snickering at his shriek. “You’re my baby, Noctis, I can’t help it.”   

Today’s a day where Noctis doesn’t have anything new to harvest, but he made bread he knows Prompto would love to have some of, so he packs half a loaf and a few more items into a basket, waves goodbye to Iris and Ignis, and makes his way out.

When he enters, Loqi doesn’t point his pen. In fact, Loqi’s standing near one of the aisles, lips pursed, an agitated line pressed deep into his shoulders. Noctis places the basket by the register, wipes his hands on his shirt (he hated how they got so sweaty when he was anxious), and hesitantly steps toward Loqi.

“Lo—?”

Noctis can’t breathe.

It’s Glauca. Standing in the middle of the shop, perusing the aisles like he’s some tourist, and Noctis wants to vomit right then and there. He wants to scream. The only thing that stops him is Loqi’s steady hand on the small of his back; of Loqi’s fingers twitching in a way that makes Noctis know Prompto is being informed.

Glauca turns, smiles sharply when he notices Noctis. He sets the nearly crumbling clock back on the shelf and walks towards him.

He gets five steps toward Noctis’s frozen form before Prompto’s suddenly there, a comfortable, protective presence. He’s drawn to his full height, and there’s an air wrapped around him that Noctis isn’t familiar with—not on his friend, at least. It’s an air that makes Noctis’s breath clog in his throat, makes him curl into himself, makes him remember that for all his sunny smiles and rants about the softness of Chocobos, there are reasons why his guardian forbade Noctis from seeking Prompto. 

It’s enough to stop Glauca.

Glauca stares evenly at Prompto before he inclines his head in a respectful bow. Which bewilders Noctis, because Glauca didn’t bow for _anyone_. Not even for Ardyn.

“Witch-King,” says Glauca.

 _What,_ Noctis thinks.

Prompto smiles, tight-lipped and just a little bit bloodthirsty. Noctis doesn’t protest when he’s pulled behind his friend. “Oathbreaker,” Prompto greets, a cool, biting tone that makes Noctis curl up tight against his back. “What brings you here?”

Glauca says nothing, but Noctis feels his stare keenly.

“I asked you a question, _Oathbreaker_ ,” Prompto spits out. From the corner of his eye, Noctis eyes Loqi in the shadows. “What do you want with me and mine?”

Noctis would swallow, but his throat is far too dry.

“Adagium requests his presence.”

“Do tell me why I should listen?” Prompto asks. He doesn’t sound like the Prompto Noctis knows; he sounds cold, and ruthless; a man whose enemies tremble and shiver at the mere mention of him. “Tell the Accursed he has no power here.”

“Adagium will not be pleased,” Glauca states, and then locks eyes with Noctis. “He will retaliate, Witch-King.”

“ _I dare him to try.”_

Prompto doesn’t sound human.

The world stills, it seems, and slows. Noctis’s heart beats wildly in his chest, so fast and sharp he thinks he’s going to go into cardiac arrest. He almost doesn’t notice Loqi behind him, but he’s always been hyperaware of his surroundings whenever he’s in a dangerous situation, so he does.

“I’m so sorry,” whispers Loqi. He sounds so regretful, so mournful, Noctis doesn’t understand what’s happening until his breath has already escaped him, a piercing pinch at his side.

“Wh—?”

Loqi slaps some sort of paper on the back of Prompto’s neck, and he stills, almost deathly so. Noctis remembers, in the back of his mind, Prompto explaining to him the various ways to block a witch’s power.

_“Loqi . . . NO—!”_

A binding spell written on a piece of paper works just as well as one spoken.

His feet crumble beneath him, and he collapses like a marionette. Prompto hits the grounds in a deafening thud, hissing and spewing curses, his magic temporarily bound and sealed. Loqi ties Noctis’s wrists and his feet, not like it’s needed since Noctis can’t even feel his limbs, and Glauca picks him up easily. Like he used to scoop Noctis into the air and throw him when he was younger.

When his escape attempts didn’t exist.

He shivers violently in Glauca’s arms as they make their way to the exit, Prompto yelling and struggling behind them.

 _“OATHBREAKER,”_ Prompto is shrieking; enraged and deathly, poisonous and grieving at the betrayal, at Noctis snatched away from a place he feels safest.

To carry the title of _Oathbreaker_ is a curse in and of itself. Promises and oaths are sacred. It is not broken lightly. Loqi stumbles once they’re outside the shop, but he regains his composer and opens the backseat of the car that wasn’t there when Noctis entered the shop a few minutes ago.

He’s bundled up and placed in the backseat. Loqi buckles him in, and Noctis watches Glauca settle in the passenger seat of the car, observes Aranea tap a beat on the steering wheel. He knows she’s annoyed by what’s going on by, well, the heavy scowl on her lips. She had never been good at masking her anger, just like how Noctis struggles to hide his fear.

“Let’s go,” Glauca orders.

Aranea puts the car into reverse, and smoothly pulls out of the parking lot. Tires squeal on the gravel, and they’re off. The only thing they leave behind besides tire marks on the road, and puzzled, alarmed locals and tourists, is the echo of Prompto’s deafening scream.

_“OATHBREAKER.”_

 

*

 

They reach the manor by sunset. Noctis still can’t move, but that’s not what he’s concerned about. He’s terrified of what waits him in the manor, knows his misery will come shaped in the form of his guardian. Before he returned to Cape Caem, during that dreadful week, Ardyn forbade him from seeking Prompto’s presence.

“I know you don’t understand yet, guppy,” he had said, fingers lightly braiding Noctis’s hair. “But there are people in this world who will say the most prettiest of things, if it gets you to trust them; and if you do, well, then it hurts all the more when they seize a chance to stab you in your sleep.”

Noctis had agreed to the order, as if he had much of a choice, but hadn’t obeyed. Noctis knew, since he had met Prompto almost two years and a half ago, that the other teen was worth disobeying his guardian.

He still isn’t sure he wants to know the cost, however.

The manor rises into view; a beautiful, sprawling mansion meant to keep Noctis hidden, meant to keep him safe.

Noctis has never felt safe in those halls. He knows he never will.

As Aranea parks, Loqi touches the back of Noctis’s neck. His spine tingles, and he stiffens as the weight of his limbs return to him. He can flex his toes, his fingers. He’s untied promptly, and then Glauca grabs his forearm and drags him out of the car.

He isn’t wearing shoes, and the asphalt is hot and uncomfortable, but if he complains or makes a noise about it, he knows he’s going to get an earful about the importance of footwear. He’s probably going to get one regardless, once his guardian or one of his minders catches sight of his bare feet on the tile. Every step he takes is a sharp, nearly gutting rise of pain, but he bites down on his lip hard enough it bleeds.

That pain, at least, is bearable.

“Oh, guppy,” his guardian says once they’re inside the foyer. Noctis trembles; he might’ve slid to the floor if Glauca’s grasp weren’t so vicious. “You’ve been making quite the mess, haven’t you?”

Something shatters inside his lungs.

“I . . . I . . ..”

His guardian smiles; gentle, but there’s a hint of victory in there, of mockery, and Noctis, no matter how hard he tries, cannot cease his trembling.

“Let’s get you settled in, then,” his guardian murmurs, patting his head in a manner that makes Noctis feel like he’s some silly little animal, like the strays he takes care of around the lighthouse. He wonders how they are doing, if they have been fed yet. If they know Noctis is not there. “Welcome home, my little guppy.”

Noctis attempts to swallow the melon-sized knot in his throat, but it doesn’t work.

It never does.

 

*

 

When he’s fourteen, Noctis, feeling rebellious, feeling so tired and exhausted of only seeing the same people every day, of only interacting with those his guardian has hand-picked and deemed worthy, asks for the one thing he has only ever wanted: his freedom.

It’s surprisingly easy to make his guardian agree, with simple stipulations— _don’t make trouble,_ and _answer the phone when I call,_ and _you mustn’t depend upon others, guppy; learn to survive on your own means_.

He searches for a week for a place to live. While he searches, he makes sure to become the impeccable child his guardian yearns for. He doesn’t slouch, there are little mistakes in his manners and behavior. He looks people in the eye when he talks.  

Noctis finds Cape Caem when his guardian begins a game of planting small seeds of doubt inside him. There’s emphasis on Noctis’s young age, on the little he knows of the world that doesn’t involve the walls of where he grew up. Noctis remains stubborn, though, and persists through the sometimes-distressing conversations that make Noctis feel like he’s been broken into small pieces and stitched back together too wrong, too late.

He makes a presentation about Cape Caem, listing the small towns’ facts, history, and tidbits. He enthusiastically mentions the lack of Mer in its’ proximity, and knows he’s hit the jackpot when his guardian hums in pensive thought.

Two weeks after he finds the abandoned lighthouse and cottage, he moves out of his childhood home.

He almost wishes it hurt when he sees it fade from the rearview mirror, wishes he had the urge to ask Aranea to turn the car around so he could say goodbye one last time, but there’s no urge. There’s no deep ache of loneliness and fear. All Noctis feels is relief; relief and a bright, burning emotion he can’t really name or understand the farther he leaves the estate lands.

Aranea drives him to his new home and pretends her charge isn’t crying behind her, isn’t pressing his hand against his mouth to smother the louder sobs that spill off his tongue.

She does a lot of pretending, where Noctis is involved.  

 

*

 

His guardian sits him down in one of their various sitting rooms; this one is decked out in delicate, mahogany furniture, and blue accents. Noctis stares at the dark, soft rug as his guardian takes a seat across from him, legs crossed; posture impeccable.  

“My dear, little guppy,” he begins, and Noctis nearly curls into a ball right then and there. “What, pray tell, were you thinking?”

Noctis doesn’t say a word.

“You weren’t thinking at all, that’s what,” Ardyn continues, satisfied by both the way Noctis cowers before him and the way he stays silent. “I don’t know how my heart can take such disobedience, pet. I gave you clear orders to stay away from that . . . witch, and here we are. You, disregarding my words. Truly, your time in Cape Caem has turned you into some sort of rebellious child you’ve no business being.”

Noctis swallows. He wants to cry.

he wants

“You know my policy on disobedience, Noctis,” Ardyn says quietly. Noctis wishes he didn’t sound so calm, so unbothered, in the face of his charge’s obvious fear and discomfort. “This behavior will not do. Simply put.”

He exhales. His lungs rattle. His heart is no longer beating. Noctis is a walking ghost in these halls. He must not exist underneath this roof.

“I truly hope you have not allowed that boy to fluff your head with such tales?” Ardyn quirks an eyebrow. Noctis wants to melt and become one with the wooden floor. “Loqi tells me you’ve been researching this . . . curse.”

Bitterness spreads in his mouth.

“You’re not under a curse, my child,” Ardyn states. He laces his fingers and props them on his elevated knee. “Perhaps, you are often ill, but you’ve always been a sickly little thing, but that’s caused from a weakened disposition rather than the cause of a magical entity.”

Noctis’s fingers curl into small fists underneath his thighs, but even that does nothing to stop his shivers.

“Do you understand me, Noctis?” His guardian questions; voice soft, but still loud. It prickles Noctis’s skin, makes his ears pop as he nods. “I would like to hear you say it.”

“Y . . . yes . . ..”

Ardyn tuts. “Now, now. What is the proper way to address me? Have all your manners escaped you in Caem?”

A part of Noctis kind of wishes Iris had drowned him when they’d met.

“Yes, father.”

His guardian could not reach him in death, after all.

“Good boy,” says his guardian. He reaches for a book on the coffee table, puts on his reading glasses, and clears his throat. “Do get dressed in suitable clothing, little one. You look like you’ve been dragged through Duscae by a voretooth.”

Despite the raucous maelstrom of emotions thundering inside of him, Noctis cracks a small smile at the imagery and agrees.

Loqi shadows him as he walks the familiar path to his bedroom. Says nothing.

Noctis wants to ask about Prompto, but he knows his questions won’t be welcome in these halls. So, he pushes the urge down until it’s little more than a speck, something barely noticeable, and goes to change into clothes he hates and shoes he doesn’t like to wear.

He wants to go back to Cape Caem. He wants to see the Mer again. He wants to listen to Ignis and Gladio banter with one another on the proper diet of a growing teen as they argue over what foods to cook for the day. He wants to have Coctura travel to his lighthouse every other weekend for Caem carrots, in exchange for her absolutely divine fish dishes. He wants to barter with the other locals. He wants to harvest his crops, and tend to his garden, and watch it flourish under his careful touch. He wants Prompto’s weighted blanket. He wants

What he wants, he cannot have anymore.

Noctis breathes, curls his fingers around his sleeves. He does his best to ignore the way his heart shatters in his chest, the way his lungs constrict with every half-breath he takes.

He breathes.

 

*

 

Noctis channels everything he has learned in this household and behaves impeccably. There’s a silent war between he and his guardian, and he’s positive that if he behaves the way he truly wishes, if he throws the tantrums that he wants the throw, if he snarls and grumbles and barricades himself underneath his covers, his guardian will win.

Noctis is terrified of the costs of being on the losing side.

He doesn’t mumble, or slouch, or pick at the vegetables and fruit he’s given during meals. He engages in conversation when prompted, looks at others in the eyes. He stays in sight, but he remains quiet; submissive. His guardian wants him to be explosive, to give more reasons for Noctis to be sequestered away from the rest of the world. Noctis will give him little.

Instead of spending his days in the gardens, he spends them in the library. He reads and he researches through Ardyn’s expansive texts, though he takes care when he does. He knows his behavior is suspicious to the others, because Noctis had never been one to find solace in the library before, and Ardyn likes to loom over his shoulders and watch his actions like some sort of hawk stalking an injured prey.

If his guardian discovers he is researching curses, and the Mer, Noctis isn’t sure what sort of hell will be released.

One evening, Ardyn shadows him as Noctis thinks he’s found a breakthrough, sort of, he hopes. Prompto isn’t there to guide him or explain what he doesn’t understand. Ardyn would disapprove if he knew just what Noctis trudges the aisles in the library for.

“I am quite curious, my guppy,” Ardyn speaks as Noctis pulls two more texts from the shelf, carrying them back to the table he’s commandeered for this purpose. “As to what you are researching so deeply? Care to ease an old man’s curiosity?”

Noctis’s heart stutters. “I’m . . ..”

Ardyn waits, head tilted. He looks like he already knows what Noctis is looking for.

Noctis’s mouth dries. “Um.”

“You wouldn’t happen to be looking at counter curses or, pray tell, the Mer, would you?” Ardyn questions in a quiet, even tone.

Noctis doesn’t dare breathe. Doesn’t think.

“I have asked you a question, little guppy. _Answer it.”_

Noctis drops his gaze to the dusty books. “Yes,” he says, but his voice is little more than a whisper, than the soft crackles of the fire in the hearth.

“Noctis. We have discussed this before, and I thought we were finished with this . . . foolish behavior,” Ardyn begins, and it’s like everything Noctis has been doing these past weeks is gone—he deflates like a balloon with no air. His shoulders hunch. He curls into himself. He doesn’t breathe. “I had thought you’d matured, but, no, you’re still little, it seems.”

Noctis breathes through a rattling lung. He thinks he wheezes aloud. “I’m . . . it’s not f-f-foolish.”

“Hush, now,” Ardyn orders.

Noctis clams up; shrinks and hunkers back inside himself. His quiet confidence, his small rebellion, has surrendered to the larger enemy.

“There is no curse placed upon you, you foolish, naïve _child_ ,” Ardyn tells him, all but spatting out the words in a soft tone. Noctis wishes his guardian yelled more, wished his ire burned bright and vicious rather than festered softly, a poisonous tongue hidden behind a wide-toothed smile. Perhaps, it would be easier to hate him, call him monstrous, if it were. “I know not what fancies a human boy has to want to walk among the Mer, but it will end today, Noctis. Stop this idiotic behavior, I have raised you _better_ —.”

“But there _is_ a curse,” Noctis dares interrupt; his heart is almost in pieces now, piercing his lungs by the shard. “Please, _please,_ sir, if . . . if you l-listen to—.”

“Do _not_ interrupt me, Noctis; I daresay you’ve grown far too big for your shoes, and as I was _saying,_ you are a perfectly healthy, _human. Little boy, and_ —,”

“But . . . there is a curse, I know there is because the spell . . . the sp-spell made me—.”

_tide mother visits him and_

_water burns_

Ardyn slams his hand down on the table, and the sound swallows’ noise from the world like a vacuum. Noctis chokes on his words and flinches back; the back of his head hitting the wood of the armchair. He’s trembling to a degree that makes him think he’s going to choke on his spit, on his tears, on the bile that builds up in the back of his throat.

Ardyn stares him down, steely-eyed and hardened. His eyes are almost pools of vitriolic black. “There. Is. No. Curse.” His guardian hisses.

Noctis wishes he could say that his guardian resembled a demon more than a man, but he knows it wouldn’t have been correct. Ardyn looks the same as always, only more enraged, more pissed off. He looks like he wants to smack the teeth out of Noctis’s mouth. They stay like that for a bit; Ardyn giving him a withering, poisonous gaze; and Noctis, shrinking, barely breathing, trying to slow the tremors that wrack his shoulders with little improvement.

_YOUR MEMORY REJECTS YOU._

“There is no curse, Noctis,” Ardyn continues, much more calmly, once some of the tension has bleed away. “You are not cursed. You are not a Mer. You have no Mer blood in you. You are a little human _child_ who thinks he knows more than his father.”

“Please,” Noctis wheezes out. He doesn’t know why he keeps talking, why he has chosen now, of all times, to find his voice. “ _Please . . ._ please . . ..”

Ardyn sighs and cups Noctis’s cheek.

The touch does not bring Noctis comfort, does not make him feel safe, only rattled and shaken; not like it would if it were Prompto or Iris or, even, _Cor_ who touched him. All Noctis feels is the ice-cold grip of terror, but he still leans into the warmth of Ardyn’s hand. There will always be a part of him that seeks comfort, and love, and support, seeks to hide from monsters that fester in the dark, from the only father he has ever known, ever had.

The only father he will ever have.

 _There is no curse_ , he tells himself. _He is doing what’s best for me._

“Repeat after me, love,” Ardyn murmurs. The dimming sun casts a shadow across his eyes. “There is no curse.”

Noctis is a blank slate; a canvas awaiting its painter. “There is no curse,” Noctis echoes, and a numbness sinks deep in his brain.

“Good. _Good_.” Ardyn moves his hand and pets Noctis slowly. Noctis slumps forward, though he flinches like he always does at the way Ardyn tsks at his posture, coils tight and miniscule in his own skin. “Still so little,” Ardyn adds, in a fond and warm tone. It doesn’t make Noctis feel any less terrified, any less miserable.

Any less small.

 

*

 

_what noctis wants, he_

_splinters and_

_cannot have, you_

_~~are not to return to~~ _

 

*

 

Prompto Argentum is one of the first people he meets when he moves into Cape Caem. After a day spent shuffling his furniture about in a manner that makes his satisfied, a day spent fixing small leaks and tears, and working on the plumbing and wirework of his new house, there’s a knock that interrupts his small break.

He brings with him a basket filled to the brim of plated foods, held under saran wrap and preservation charms. “I know how hectic moving in can become,” Prompto says after Noctis stares at the basket a second too long without saying anything. “And you’re probably too exhausted to cook, so I made some of these dishes for you.”

Noctis blinks.

“Nothing poisonous, I assure you,” Prompto jokes, and Noctis couldn’t help the snort. Prompto brightens visibly, a sunny disposition that, somehow, doesn’t annoy Noctis into wanting the dark comfort of his upstairs bedroom. “I’m Prompto. I work at the little odds-and-ends store in town!”

“Noctis,” he greets, a shy half-smile on his lips. “It’s, um, good to see you?”

He blanches at the way he ends his greeting with a question, but Prompto only laughs. It’s a quiet, beautiful sound.

“I think we’re going to be great friends, Noct,” Prompto says, matter-of-factly, as if they would be anything else but friends.

“Yeah,” Noctis replies, something dark and light in his throat. His eyes burn a little. “Yeah, I – I’d like that.”

Prompto smiles.

Noctis has only been at Cape Caem for little more than a day, but the seaside town no one visits is already making Noctis feel like he’s finally at peace, his restless roots settled in the soil, grounded and supported.

He smiles back, not as bright, not as big, but still there, still present.

_Progress._

 

*

 

A few days after their argument, Noctis finishes his morning lessons with ease. After his deplorable behavior (his guardian’s words, not his), it was decided it would be best if Noctis relearned all the etiquette nearly drilled into his skull during childhood. Unlike before, he doesn’t whine when he’s told to fix a tea tray. He doesn’t bow the wrong way or bend the spines of books. He’s steeped in misery, though, and everyone is aware of it. Like they always are when he and his guardian have an argument; there is little about him that the manor staff don’t know about.

His tutors dismiss him, and Noctis prepares himself for another day full of research. As he reaches the winding double doors that mark the library, he knows even before he half-heartedly pulls on the door what he will find. The library is locked. While he’s not surprised at this outcome, Noctis isn’t sure whether he wants to scream or cry in frustration or do both.

He stands there, in the middle of the hallway, his face spasming as if not sure whether to show his displeasure or his emotional storm. He feels, rather than sees, his guardian.

“Guppy,” the man greets. “What are you doing?”

“I . . ..” Despite the many hours spent in a sitting room with strict and unrelenting etiquette tutors, Noctis’s eyes remain fixed on the shiny buckles of the shoes he hates wearing. “I wanted to, to go to the library, but . . . but it’s not . . ..”

“Open?” Ardyn offers.

Noctis nods.

“I locked it,” says Ardyn, as if there’s nothing wrong, before he rests his hand on Noctis’s shoulder and presses him away from the doors. “It was quite concerning, after all, that someone so little held interest in those texts.” At the noise Noctis is too slow to swallow, Ardyn levels stern eyes at him, and Noctis silently chokes on the shards in his throat. “Some things on those shelves are not appropriate for little boys like you, Noctis.”

He doesn’t wipe his hands on his pants, but he wants too. “Oh,” Noctis says, meaning to sound strong and unbothered by what’s happening. It comes out as a croak. “When . . . when will it be o-open?”

Ardyn stares at him. Noctis can’t decipher his expression. He never can. “When I decide it to be, of course.”

Noctis swallows. His throat scratches uncomfortably. “Okay.”

_what he wants, he_

_can never have and_

“Come,” his guardian reaches for him. Noctis tenses with the urge to flinch, to run, to curl back into himself so small he resembles nothing more than a speck of dust meant to be swept away, as Ardyn loops their arms together and pulls him into a sedate pace. “Walk these old bones through the gardens, would you?”

“Okay,” Noctis says.

Ardyn purses his lips. Says nothing.

Noctis feels like his lungs have been sliced into ribbons, stretched and pinned out on a display for curious bystanders to observe, feels like someone filled the gaping cavity with water, and ordered him to never drown when he breathed.

“Yes, father,” Noctis repeats. He hopes Ardyn ignores the way he trembles, the way his voice shudders and quakes with each exhale, every inhale. “Let’s t-take a walk.”

It’s not like he had a say in the matter.

Ardyn smiles, gentle. There is no mockery there, no victorious gleam. He smiles like a father whose child has taken his first steps. He smiles like a man who only wished to take a stroll with his son and received his wish. Noctis can’t really ignore the warmth that spreads and unfurls in his veins at the sight of the smile. His guardian smiled so rarely, it became a precious gift to Noctis’s eyes, a sign that, finally, he has done something right; he has earned love.

The gardens are still as beautiful, as lovely, as Noctis remembers. They walk slowly through the aisles, his guardian pointing out the newest additions to the landscape, what has bloomed thus far and hasn’t; he even drops a line here and there about the mini fae who like to nap in the easternmost part of the garden, where their gardeners planted tulips and sunflowers specifically for them.

Noctis breathes in the fragrance of the flowerbeds. Ignores the echoing pang of loneliness, of homesickness, that settles in the sinew of his bone and creeps up his spine; festers by his knee and crawls up the length of his calf like the pain he feels when he’s on his feet for too long. His guardian continues talking; they continue moving.

It doesn’t make Noctis any less settled, any less restless. It only makes the longing he has for Cape Caem lengthen.

 

*

 

_water burns_

_and he_

 

*

 

Noctis gets lost once, when he’s younger. Smaller. One of his minders liked to play hide-and-seek with him during storms, thinking it would ease his fear of the rain and the thunder. Only Noctis never feared storms, never found them too loud or distressing. There was safety there, in the crackles and rumbles of the sky, in the way Ramuh communicated with the world.

He slips out into the gardens, eager to find someplace to hide. His feet make no sound against the wet earth, but he doesn’t slip. He never falls. Ramuh does not bring misfortune to those who love his blessings.

To his young mind, the gardens are a maze filled with wonder, with places he has yet to seek; a world where he sometimes finds little faeries curled in flower buds. They like to make him flower crowns, and Noctis likes to let them nap in his hair. Though his father does not like that much, scolds him in that exasperated and fond tone of his that sometimes makes Noctis’s stomach crumble into knots.

But it’s raining, and he’s playing a game he’s seldom allowed to play. His father and other tutors don’t like it when he runs about the manor; thinks he will fall and harm himself on the tile and rough edges found throughout his home. But Noctis knows he is safe here. The rain will not harm him.

It is not Ramuh he fears.

Noctis moves deeper into the maze, into the often-confusing twists and turns of the manor gardens. He hasn’t really gone here without his father or another minder a step behind him, has never really been allowed to be out in the gardens by himself, especially when he’s supposed to be getting ready for bed. But it’s a game. It’s a _game_ , and it’s raining, and

He stops. Under the heavy sheets of rain, under the sizzling pops of lightning, Noctis has little idea of where he’s wandered. He knows he safe. He knows he’s home. It’s a game, he tells himself. The rain pours endlessly, and he sees his breath in white, clear wisps of air. He sneezes, sniffles. He can’t see more than a few inches in front of him.

_~~it is not ramuh he fears.~~ _

Noctis starts shivering, arms wrapped around his torso as he leans into a wet and cold hedge. Some of the vines prickle his skin, but the pain doesn’t bother him. Something cold grabs hold of the pit of his stomach in a tight grip. It refuses to be shaken the longer Noctis sits there, curled up in a ball, shivering; waiting for someone to notice he is gone.

A few minutes pass. An hour. A decade.

“Oh, guppy, what trouble are you causing at this hour?”

Noctis shivers in his father’s arms as he’s scooped up. The walk back is quick, but maybe that’s because Noctis is still so cold, so drenched from the rain, that he’s losing time. He’s rushed through a warm shower and is dressed in pajamas and fuzzy socks before he can even make sense of what’s happening.

He comes back to himself, perched on his father’s lap. He’s reading something, only the light in the fireplace giving him sight. Noctis snuggles closer, desperate for the warmth of his father’s touch, and the man chuckles; cards fingers through Noctis’s hair.

“You gave me quite the scare, little guppy,” his father says quietly, and then gently hushes Noctis when he makes a soft, unhappy whine. “It’s alright. Hush, now, I’m not mad. Shh . . . you’re safe here, Noctis.” His father hums lightly, wrapping the blankets around Noctis tighter the more he trembles. “. . . shh . . . the outside world is scary, hmm? Perhaps you know better now, that your place is here, with me, in our home.”

He shivers. Presses against the curve of his father’s neck. His teeth chatter loudly.

“It’s okay,” his father tells him. “I’ve got you.”

But somehow, the warmth of his father, and the hearth, and the various blankets pulled around his shoulders, are still not enough.

The cold has settled deep in his lungs. It is not enough.

_it is not ramuh he_

 

*

 

Every morning, before his minders rush inside the bedroom with the intention to rouse him for the day, before they dress him in clothes he doesn’t like, before he must wear things that irritate the soles of his feet, Noctis stands in front of his mirror.

“He’s doing what’s best for me,” Noctis says to his reflection. He ignores his trembling, ignores the dark half-moons underneath his eyes. He ignores, and he ignores, and he ignores, and

He _ignores_.

The library remains locked. His tutors shuffle him around the manor, but they never go near the library. Sometimes, his lessons are in the gardens, but more often than naught they reside in a sitting room. Loqi shadows him still. Says nothing.

Aranea remains elusive, but that’s normal. His days at Cape Caem do not exist.

_you will_

_never re_

He breathes. He breathes. He breathes.

As his access to books are now limited, Noctis spends his free moments in the gardens. Sometimes, if he’s feeling cranky, if _his guardian_ feels he is cranky, he goes to his room (is sent there) for a nap. It’s not like he minds napping; by all means, he welcomes them as it shortens the hours. But he hates how, when he tries to ask to go back to the library, tries to ask about why Glauca had taken him from Caem so roughly, tried to discuss any of the topics he knows he shouldn’t, Ardyn gives him those stern gazes that makes Noctis shrink until he is less than a foot tall, and decides that he is in need of a nap.

 _At least,_ he thinks to himself, _he’s not standing in a corner._

The beauty of the garden bleeds like an opened wound. The sprites weave their floral crowns, but it only serves to make Noctis feel trapped, feel like it is wrought in iron and steel.

_MY BELOVED CHILD._

“Everything is fine,” Noctis says to himself every time he wakes, stares at the mirror that screams otherwise. He stares at his reflection, stares at the haunted look he dons, stares at the way he doesn’t really breathe anymore. “He’s doing what’s best for me.”

If he says it enough, perhaps it will ring true in the end.

 

*

 

noctis wants he wants

~~what he wants, he cannot have~~

_you are not to return to cape caem._

 

*

 

“Oh, baby,” Prompto said once, Noctis curled tight and small in his arms. “Just because he’s doing what he thinks is best for you, doesn’t mean it’s right.”

 

*

 

After a few more weeks of falling back into a routine he’s known majority of his life, Noctis finds the shadows under his eyes grows. It grows larger as he shrinks smaller and smaller underneath his guardian’s stern and overprotective rule. His peaceful days at the docks, at his little farm, cease to exist. It is as if Noctis had never lived in Cape Caem.

Two months pass, or perhaps longer, perhaps shorter, time means nothing to Noctis now, and he wakes abruptly in the middle of the night. He’s confused, perplexed as his minders never bother him at night unless he’s still awake, of course, and there’s a darkened shadow near him that makes his heart shudder.

“Wake up, kid. Wake up _now.”_

He jolts upright.

Aranea somehow feels like a breath of fresh air. “Come on, kid,” she mutters, gently rousing him out of the bed. “There anything you want to take with you?”

“N-No . . .,” Noctis murmurs, stumbling. He isn’t sure what to make of this, what to think, but he knows something important is happening. Something that Noctis can’t go back from. “Everything’s in . . . Caem . . ..”

He ignores the shattered pang in his lungs at the mere utterance of Cape Caem.

 _He is doing what’s best for me_ , he reminds himself. It still doesn’t sound like the truth at all.

“Good. Wonderful,” says Aranea, and then she helps him put on shoes. She shushes him, not unkindly, at the noise he makes when they’re slipped on. “I know, I know. You hate them, but . . . you need them where we’re going, okay? We don’t want your feet getting damaged.”

 _We?_ Noctis thinks, and blinks, wide-eyed, dazed.

Loqi appears in the doorway. “It’s all clear, Commodore.”

“Fantastic,” Aranea says, grinning sharply, before she wraps Noctis in a coat. She steps back, satisfied, and sets her shoulders. “Alright. Let’s head out.”

“I . . . what?” Noctis shakes his head. He curls his fingers around the sleeve of the coat. The weight is a welcomed, comfortable change. “I don’t . . ..”

A haunting voice echoes. _OATHBREAKER._

“You . . . you broke . . .,” Noctis can’t even finish his sentence. There is no oxygen in this house. He cannot breathe anymore.

 Loqi quirks his lips in a half-smile; deprecative. “It’s complicated . . . Anyway, we don’t have much time. We must hurry before the Accursed rises.”

 _The Accursed . . . The Adagium . . ._ Leviathan whispers in his conscious. _The Stain Should Not Exist . . ._

Noctis kind of wants to scream, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t, and he follows Aranea and Loqi through a passageway he had never seen before; the stone crumbling before his very eyes. It’s dimly lit and has clearly been abandoned for years, possibly decades. Aranea leads them, her feet a soft thud on the cement floor. Loqi takes up their rear.

They move as one, protecting Noctis on all sides. Like how Cor and Nyx liked to shadow Noctis whenever he left the cottage, like how Gladio liked to stay a few steps behind him, even if it were just to his gardens, just outside to pull some weeds from his front yard. Like Noctis is something previous and invaluable. Like an abandoned child left to die in parking lot is worth losing their life for.

“How are we going to leave?” Loqi questions quietly. Noctis grows more awake as the minutes pass. He wonders when his guardian will become aware of his absence. Perhaps, the man already is. “A car is too noticeable at this hour.”

Aranea never stops her gait. “The old-fashioned way.”

And that’s how Noctis ends up on a purple Chocobo, squished in front of Aranea even though she holds the reigns to the creature. As if they know the weight of their situations, the Chocobos make little noise as they travel through the thick forests that surround both the manor and Duscae.

The time the sun paints the sky light pinks, purples, and yellows, and Noctis knows they have successfully escaped the manor.

“We can’t go back to Cape Caem yet,” Aranea explains as they enter the softer plains of northern Cleigne; from the looks of it, they are nearing Lestallum. Noctis has never been there before, but he had heard murmurs of the sprawling city carved out of a cliff. He never had much reason to visit, even though he wanted to see their farmers’ market at least once. Heard of how it can span for miles. “It isn’t safe right now.”

Noctis swallows his protests, and nods.

He has little idea what’s happening, still doesn’t know what Aranea and Loqi want to do with him. He hopes he has not walked to his death. He hopes it will be quick if he has.

“The shrine is in the Vesperpool,” Loqi yells over a roar of wind. His Chocobo, a pale blue one, squawks. “An underground palace similar to Costlemark Tower.”

“How perfect,” Aranea replies. She doesn’t sound like she likes the idea, but she tightens their Chocobos’ reins. “Well, kid, looks like we’re going to the Vesperpool.”

Noctis breathes.

_water burns and_

_YOUR MEMORY REJECTS YOU._

It’s not like he has much of a choice in the matter.

 

*

 

Around noon, they stop at an outpost. At least, Noctis assumes it is an outpost, but perhaps outposts are not stationed in a tunnel. He has never been to one of those before. Ardyn disliked the people, the atmosphere; hated the food options offered there, and Noctis seldom traveled before he lived in Cape Caem. He had no reason to seek an outpost.

His gaze catches sight of the various runes that shimmer above them when the sunlight hits it just right. He watches two vampires (or were they dhampirs?) chat with one another near a store, drinking from what could only be a blood pouch. A woman chases a small wolf pup on the other end, but her voice is not harsh, not loud; she is laughing.

“Where are we?” Noctis mutters in Aranea’s general direction. Loqi is giving their Chocobos water and food.

“Meldacio HQ,” Aranea tells him. “Go stretch your legs a bit, order some food. I’m gonna ask around for directions.”

“We just go straight,” says Loqi.

 Aranea rolls her eyes and then walks towards the store. There’s a restaurant attached to it; a small one, family owned, but clearly loved and popular. A weapons shop is nestled near the entrance of the HQ, but there are a few more in the area from what he can see.

He walks slowly, in shoes he wants to take off. He doesn’t, if only because he’s a little afraid of making Aranea disappointed. Prickles of pain scatter up his legs, but he’s used to that. He doesn’t order food. He’s used to hunger, as well.

He stops in front of the only house in the HQ. On the porch sits an elderly woman on a rocking chair, and she beckons him closer once they lock eyes. Noctis goes. She doesn’t look familiar, but he feels like she does.

“Um.” His eyes drop to the bundle of yarn on her lap. “Good morning.”

“Child,” the woman says. Her knitting needles move on their own. Noctis wonders if that’s a witch thing, to knit. He does his best to ignore the want in his chest, does his best to unsee Cape Caem in everything he observes. “Darkness lingers in you.”

_THERE IS A STAIN._

 

*

 

The Vesperpool is quiet at this hour, though it’s not like Noctis has much of a reference to compare it to. He’d heard of the lake from the few fishermen who’d passed through Cape Caem; they said the place had the best fishing spots. He slides off the Chocobo, calming himself by patting its’ feathers and listening to its’ coos and chirps.

“Where are we going?” Noctis asks, but he isn’t really expecting them to respond.

“Steyliff Grove,” Aranea replies. “Myth says it only opens at night, back when daemons roamed Eos, but, well, it’ll open if we have the right – blood.”

Noctis blinks, clenches and unclenches his fist. If there is a sacrifice, he hopes it will be quick. “Blood?”

“Like, DNA, kid.” Aranea snorts. “No one’s going to be cutting you up, don’t worry.”

As Noctis follows Aranea and Loqi through the Vesperpool, he watches the sunlight scatter across the top of the lake. His breath catches at the sight it makes under the early morning sun of Lucis. As they, apparently, get closer to where they need to be, Loqi starts talking about the history behind the Vesperpool.

He listens at Loqi talks about how water represented death – and still does, to an extent – and how Lucians paid tribute to the dead at Steyliff.

Noctis searches through the murky waters. A few spaces away, it ripples in a way that marks a fish’s speedy retreat. Or a Mer’s. “Are there . . . are there Mer’s here?”

“They’re all dead now, most likely,” Aranea comments, far too light for the gravity of her words. Loqi falls almost uncomfortably quiet. “At the Vesperpool, at least, they were thought to be the guardians of both the Myrlwood and of Steyliff but . . . during the rise of anti-Mer sentiment, I believe . . . well . . ..”

She trails off, but Noctis is kind of glad she hadn’t finished her thought. His stomach’s trying to turn itself inside out.

Water makes way for crumbling stone and architecture. Steyliff Grove looks imposing, even as ruins, and Noctis swallows. Aranea, sensing his discomfort, grasps his elbow.

“Let’s go, kid,” she mutters. “It’s now or never.”

 _What is?_ Noctis wants to shriek. _What is going on?_

But his time spent under his guardians’ hand has left Noctis with little words, with a snuffed-out rebellion he can’t find the matches to reignite. He follows them until they stop in front of a door that’s so tall, it makes his neck ache.

“Press your hand against the door, kid,” says Aranea.

Noctis does.

It lights up immediately, as soon as he presses his palm against the nearly humming wood, and the doors open as if welcoming Noctis home.

It’s almost enough to make him turn on his heel and run and wait for Ardyn to find him, take him back to a place where he knows the rules, knows the game and how it’s played.

He doesn’t do that, but that’s probably because Aranea has a steady hand on the small of his back.

“It’s okay,” she says. “We’ve got you.”

He walks inside.

 

 *

 

Steyliff Grove is completely in ruins. Some parts of it look to be repaired, but other parts are reclaimed by nature in a possessive embrace. A few of the walls have weatherworn murals on them, carvings and such of ancient depictions of Mer. Some of them are aesthetic masterpieces, other’s mock and demean. He sticks close to Aranea and Loqi. They are the only familiar things he knows right now.

A part of him aches and wants for Prompto, for the calm and the peace of Cape Caem. He stomps the urge down.

 _You are not to return to Cape Caem, Noctis_ , Ardyn had ordered.

Noctis will obey.

They walk quietly until they reach a bridge. On the wall near the end of the opened space, to the left of him, is a stained-glass mural. It depicts Leviathan and the first Mer. The Grove is an odd place, wrapped in an illusion that makes Noctis believe they are underwater. But he has no tail; no gills. Only two human legs. He might never be able to find the counter to whatever he’s cursed with.

Halfway across, something long and twisting catches his gaze, and he can’t help the scream that escapes him when a serpentine dragon nearly crash-lands in front of them. It’s brightly colored, shimmering underneath the beams of sunlight. Noctis’ breath stutters out of his chest. He’s positive he’s hallucinating.

_WHO DARES ENTER THE HAVEN OF BAHAMUT? SPEAK YOUR NAMES._

Bahamut. Noctis swallows around a dry, shattered throat. The Guardian of Lucis.

“Aranea Highwind,” says Aranea. “Loqi Tummult. Noctis Lucis Caelum.” He would’ve opened his mouth to correct her, but he’s too frozen to do much more than breathe. “You know what we’re here for.”

 _YOU DARE BREAK YOUR OATHS, STARBURNER,_ the dragon—an actual breathing, _fucking dragon_ —says. _YOU DARE TURN BACK ON YOUR CROWN._

“I _am_ loyal to the crown,” Aranea spits out. Her words slip at the edges, syllables sounding far less human than Noctis knows. “I have _always_ been loyal to the crown.”

_YOU DARE SPEAK LIES. HEREIN LIES YOUR PROOF. YOU HAVE BETRAYED YOUR CROWN. BROKEN YOUR OATHS. THE BELOVED IS STAINED._

Aranea’s grip tightens on his arm. Noctis thinks they will leave imprints. “We are here because you can . . . remove the stain.”

 _YOU DARE BREAK YOUR OATHS,_ Bahamut continues, almost like some broken record. He’s twisting around them now, malcontented and angry. Noctis is going to have a splitting headache when this is over – if he survives, that is. _FORSAKEN YOUR BIRTHRIGHT._

Aranea exhales. It sounds as shaky as Noctis feels.

_YOU DARE._

“Yes, I _dare_.” The snarl rips out of her mouth. “Yes, I broke my oath. Yes, I have lied and betrayed those I swore to protect . . . I _know_. But I’m here now; I know my mistakes. I have come to undo what I have caused.”

Bahamut says nothing, but the silence is more thoughtful than enraged.

“Please,” Aranea says, at last.  

Noctis still has no fucking idea what’s happening.

 _I CANNOT AID YOU, STARBURNER._ Bahamut decrees. _YOU DARE BREAK YOUR OATHS. I CANNOT AID YOU. Y—_

“Bahamut.”

Noctis whirls around to see a closed-eyed, smiling woman. She’s dressed in long robes, her hair long and sweeping. Noctis almost falls to his knees at the sight of her.

“Gentiana,” he breathes out. “But . . . how . . .?”

Gentiana smiles, just as gentle and calm as he remembers. She had been a staple through his earliest years, always a step behind him in his memories until he reached eight years old, and his guardian disapproved of his imaginary friend.

“She does not exist, Noctis,” he would say, frowning in concern. “Perhaps, a visit to Doctor Besithia is in order. You’re old enough now to not have childhood friends.”

Noctis had never stopped seeing Gentiana, but he ignored her. The less he had to drink of that gross medicine, the better in his young mind.

 _SHIVA._ Bahamut practically writhes in place. _THIS CONCERNS YOU NOT._

Gentiana—Shiva—only smiles wider. The air around them freezes by a few degrees. “The King of Stone will always concern me, Bahamut. They need not your advice, _I_ will aid them.”

 _YOU MUST NOT INTERFERE,_ Bahamut thunders. Noctis closes his eyes at the sound. _THE ADAGIUM MUST—_

Bahamut’s voice fades, pops out of existence.

Noctis opens his eyes to see that they are no longer in Steyliff Grove. They’re on a Haven, still in the Vesperpool. “What the fuck,” Loqi states before he eyes Gentiana. “Who . . . who are you?”

“Call me Gentiana,” she greets, and then smiles warmly at Noctis. “Hello, King of Stone.”

Noctis swallows, but he doesn’t hide his relief at Gentiana’s presence. “Hi.”

There’s a lot that Noctis does not know. There are a lot of questions that burn his tongue, but what he knows is this: Gentiana will not harm him nor let anyone harm him. He is safe here.

“The Stain Should Not Exist, Yet Does,” Gentiana tells him as she walks closer. “Shall I Remove It?”

Noctis doesn’t need to think about it.

“Yes,” he breathes out.

She smiles, and

The world fades.

 

*

 

He shatters and

falls but

there is no fear and

he breathes

and

 

*

 

_the tide mother visits him and_

_water burns and_

_he_

 

*

 

In the Mer Kingdom of Insomnia, a beloved prince is born. Hatched from a clutch of twelve, he is the only one who survives. He is mischief, he is light; the kingdom rejoices whenever they hear the tinkling echo of his laugh.

The kingdom despairs when he is gone; suddenly, snatched from the coral reef his nursery lays. They search for him fervently, send notices to other lands, other kingdoms, other supernaturals. _Please,_ the kingdom pleads. _Please return our prince safely._

The prince does not reappear. The kingdom never ceases its’ search.

 

*

 

Truth always burns worse than the lie.

 

*

 

There is something freeing, something beautiful, something _precious_ about his Mer form. He breathes in the clear air of the Vesperpool waters, sinking into a cool embrace that no longer feels like a furnace. Fish scatter as he twirls and laughs in their territory, but they know he is not a threat.

Black and blue scales line his arms in a pattern he can’t really name. For his tail, they start around his bellybutton, light and somewhat soft, before they fade into the darker, bolder colorings of blues, blacks, and streaks of silver. He has fins on his elbows, circled around his ears. There’s no mirror underwater, no way for him to see what he looks like, but he doesn’t mind.

He breaks the surface a few times. Everything feels different as a Mer; he’s more sensitive to changes in temperature, and smell, in sight.

“Gods, you’re tiny,” Loqi breathes out the first time he’s caught sight of Noctis. “Holy _shit,_ Nea, he’s a—.”

“I have eyes,” says Aranea, but she’s more focused on prying information out of Gentiana. Noctis wishes her good luck.

Gentiana smiles. Noctis thinks she’s amused.

He wonders how old he is as a Mer. By the way Loqi stares at him, wide-eyed as if he’s never seen Noctis before, he thinks he’s younger than his human age. He certainly feels younger, smaller, but not in the way that his guardi . . . not in the way that Ardyn makes him feel.

A chiming voice reaches him through the water. It’s heavy in an accent that could only belong to northern Cleigne, wrapped in a lilted twang.

“Child of Man _,_ ” they are saying. “You are a Mer?”

Noctis whips around to see an older Mer swimming in hesitant circles around him, much like Leviathan had done before. Like the Tide Mother, the Mer does not know what to do with him. Noctis drinks in the other Mer’s features curiously; there is something striking about his brightly colored scales, about the way the fins on the back of his tail looks like a rigged spine.

“I am a Mer,” Noctis replies. Under the water, in the home that breathed life in Leviathan, he doesn’t hear the lyrical notes he does above land. He sounds like he’s speaking normally, but the shapes his mouth makes are not in the human tongue. “I thought Mer did not live here anymore?”

“We reside deep in the Lake, where humans dare not travel,” the Mer responds and, once he finds what he’s looking for in Noctis satisfactory, moves closer. Noctis thinks the patterns of his scales, of his skin, remind him of that fish every fisherman yearns to catch. Like the Cygillan Devil in the Galdin Sea.

“Where is your Pod, fry? Your Reef and Hatchery?”

There is one thing about the Mer that scientists and other people agree on strongly, the one thing that is common fact, that can never be twisted and formed into something different. Like most supernaturals, the young are precious. They are sacred. To harm them is to become an oathbreaker. The Mer do not even harm the children of men. Even in shipwrecks of old, they are left untouched; only shaken and broken by the things they’d witnessed.

Of course, Noctis amends internally, not everyone is kind. Not everyone is _good_. They might have good intentions, they might think they are doing what is best, but sometimes intentions come wrapped in silvery smiles and poison-painted lips. Sometimes, intentions are cruel.

Noctis knows this very well. He has lived with well-meaning intentions since he was a year and a few days old.

Anyway. The Mer are fierce and protective of their young. It’s amplified depending upon the type of Mer they are—because some do not live to see their twenties, and others live to see their thousandth. Noctis wonders what type he is.

_he shatters_

_and_

Wonders if his curse has distorted the natural laws of his birth even more.

Noctis blinks, realizing the other Mer awaits his reply. “Fry?” He finds himself asking, instead of, well, answering the question. Noctis doesn’t really know what _hatchery_ or _pod_ is for the Mer. He knows what it means for other fishes, sure, but as it always is with the Mer, the information conflicts the more he researches. “Is that an insult?”

His tail flicks behind him, a motion that betrays his irritation, the budding hurt. For all that Noctis has grown, has learned during his year and a half at Cape Caem, he is still young, still a child compared to others ~~to Ardyn~~. Words hurt worse than a knife, after all.

The Mer gives him a weird look, makes some sort of chittering sound under their breath, and says, “No, fry. It’s what we call our young. Nicknames. Fry. Fingerling. Hatchling. You don’t know these terms?”

Noctis exhales.

It’s a little trippy, watching himself breathe underwater, watching himself live instead of drown.

 _“_ I was cursed,” he explains, and almost smiles at the alarm he sees on the other Mer’s expression. It’s always a little sad to Noctis, a little bizarre and perplexing, when people who barely know him show concern over his well-being. “I could not shift before. But now I can.”

He does some sort of twirl, relishes at the way the water moves with him, does not resist him. Does not burn.

 _“_ Cursed?” The Mer’s expression storms. Noctis belatedly realizes he doesn’t even know the other’s name. “By who, fry? Who dared . . .?”

Noctis shrugs and wraps his arms around his torso. “Dunno. I was younger, then, when it happened. But . . . but it’s gone now.”

 _“_ Good,” the Mer says and then, after a pause, startles. “Ah. Where are my manners? The name’s Navyth.”

Noctis eyes him. “Noct.”

“You found a fry?” A voice calls. Before Noctis can blink, he’s face to face with another Mer. He squeaks at the shock of her sudden appearance, and bubbles pour out of his mouth. “Are you lost, fry? I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”

 _“_ He was cursed, Sania,” says Navyth. “It broke, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Sania replies. She curls around Noctis in a way that reminds him of Leviathan, of Bahamut. But he doesn’t feel scared. He doesn’t feel unsafe. “Well . . . aren’t you a darling? What’s your name?”

“Noct.”

“Ah. Well. I’m Sania,” she grins. The dark green scales scattered across her cheeks glisten as she smiles. Noctis thinks he has seen her before. “Not many people know I’m a Mer when I’m on land, but you might know me . . . Dr. Sania Yeagre at your service!”

Recognition flickers on like a lightbulb.

“Dr. Frog,” Noctis blurts.

Sania blinks. Navyth hides a laugh.

It’s kind of funny, how Noctis can feel the heat of his cheeks when he is under the cool waters of the Vesperpool.

“I . . . I mean, I mean, you’re, um, that scientist,”Noctis stammers out. He wraps his arms tighter around his torso. “Around . . . around, um, Lucis, the . . . with the frogs . . .”

“Oh! I see you’ve heard of my work,” Sania grins, wide and bright. “How was it? How was it? Did you like my latest paper about how the Disc of Cauthess changes the soil patterns of—"

“Calm down, Dr. Frog,” snorts Navyth, and then he yelps when Sania jabs him in the ribcage. “Hey! Watch the claws!”

“I’m glad to find another lover of science,” Sania says to Noctis, like Navyth isn’t choking right now. Noctis cracks a small smile. Sania trills in victory. “So, what brings you to the Vesperpool, fry?”

Noctis bites his lip.

Sensing his discomfort at the question, Sania waves her hand in the air absentmindedly. “Ah, never mind, never mind.” Then a grin, slow and mischievous and kind, unfurls on her lips. Noctis perks up, curious; his tail flicks again in interest. “Have you ever played tag as a Mer?”

Noctis shakes his head slowly. Navyth gives them both amused, but fond, looks as he slowly swims backward.

“Would you like to try?”

Noctis tilts his head. “Sure, but . . . I don’t think I can stay long?”

Sania’s bright laugh floats and scatters amongst the waves. “Oh, little fry—don’t worry about that. Let’s have some fun!”

Noctis ignores the way his skin prickles at being called little. She doesn’t mean it like that, Noctis tells himself firmly. Not everyone is his guar . . . is Ardyn.

“As long as you don’t have me capturing frogs, I don’t care,” Navyth says dryly.

Sania bristles _. “It was for science!”_

“Uh huh.”

Noctis giggles, and then touches his throat in shock. In a burst of mischief, of childlike fire he has never been allowed to burn, Noctis taps Navyth’s shoulder, yells, “You’re it!” and dashes away before the adults can do nothing more than blink.

Sania cackles, speeds after him. “Are you sure you can reach us, old man?”

“I’ll show you _old!”_

Noctis shrieks with laughter as he feels Navyth chase after them. They play a few rounds of underwater tag. Sometimes, Sania’s it, and sometimes it’s Noctis. He isn’t as fast as a Mer, mostly because he’s still unused to having fins and a tail rather than two legs, but Sania and Navyth don’t seem to be bothered by his slow speed.

Their play gathers the attention of other Mer, and they eye Noctis curiously. He breathes under their stares. He is safe here.

“Have the two-legs captured you?” A Mer whose tail, fins, and scale patters reminds Noctis of a Grouper questions; there’s a protective undercurrent to her voice. She doesn’t even know Noctis. “Shall I eat them?”

Noctis remembers, once again, that some myths about the Mer—about them tempting sailors off their boats, about them only leaving scraps of clothing behind to mark the presence of a sailor, about them lulling false security with their voices—aren’t exactly myths. The Grouper’s teeth sharpen the longer Noctis remains pensive. She looks ready for a fight on his behalf.

“I’m okay,” says Noctis.

The Mer pouts. “If you say so.”

After he swims a few more laps around the Vesperpool, reaching into caverns and crevices with a childlike wonder, he comes back to the surface. After a quick view of the area, he finds Aranea and Loqi sitting by the only fishing spot, and swims toward them.

“You’re going with the humans, then?” Navyth questions, and Noctis nods. Navyth smiles, kind and warm. “You’re always welcome here, Noct.”

The Grouper Mer sniffs. “If you ever want me to eat them—just say the word.”

Noctis laughs and promises that he will.

Once he’s near the fishing spot, he waits until Loqi and Aranea have their attention on him, and then he opens his mouth.

 _I want to go home,_ Noctis tells them. His voice is lilted, formed around the lyrical sounds that make up the Mer language. It vibrates in his throat, dances in the air. He trills.

He thinks they understand, because Aranea smiles.

“Yeah, kid. Let’s go home.”

 

*

 

Home, to Noctis, has always meant a cozy, and warm, and slightly cluttered, one-bedroom apartment above a pawnshop. Home has meant a little cottage and lighthouse on a cliffside, a small garden of fruits and vegetables. An eyesore of a rug that doesn’t bother his feet. Hot chocolate and a weighted blanket pressed in his direction when he needs comfort. A greeting before he opens his mouth.

That’s what home is. That’s what home means. The definition, the place, it will never change. Not for Noctis.

And that’s where they go.

Gentiana coaxes Noctis back through the change, and they practice it a few times on the shores of the Vesperpool until he has a firm grasp on it. He’s a little surprised that he’s grabbed it so quickly, and she gives him a fond look.

 “It is instinct, King of Stone,” she says, and then she disappears. He’s not that surprised. Even as an imaginary friend, Gentiana did as she pleased.

Aranea makes an annoyed noise at Gentiana’s sudden departure. Noctis doesn’t bother hiding his amusement.

They don’t make it to Cape Caem by sundown. The Vesperpool is too far north, and they had been traveling for most of the day. They settle in a motel in Old Lestallum, a little outpost town that’s the halfway point to Cape Caem. The receptionist at the motel gives Noctis a pursed-lip stare. He doesn’t understand why until he catches sight of himself in the mirror and winces and . . . yeah, he can understand why a few other people in the outpost stared at Aranea and Loqi in suspicion.

Once he’s showered and dressed in pajamas Loqi got from the only store in the vicinity, he listens to them hash out a hasty schedule to keep watch during the night.

“I can watch, too,” Noctis tells them. They share a look, and he frowns. “I . . . please?”

There is little that Noctis asks for.

Aranea sighs. He brightens.

Noctis has the first watch, which he doesn’t mind. He watches a random channel—it’s cooking, and he’s finding the basket ingredients fascinating, and a part of him wishes he had a notebook to jot some of them down—when there’s a light knock on the motel door.

He bites his lip, casting his gaze back to the slumbering forms of Aranea and Loqi. He doesn’t want to wake them if it’s something as simple as room service as they were utterly exhausted. He could see it curling around their shoulders the longer they stayed awake.

There’s a second knock, more persistent. Urgent. Noctis answers the door.

He wishes he didn’t.

“My,” says the voice of his nightmares. “The little guppy has traveled quite the distance.”

Noctis wheezes.

“A simple scrying spell took care of your location,” his guar—Ardyn explains lightly, like his hands are not wrapped around Noctis’s neck. “I thought I’ve made it clear that your disobedience has _consequences_ , my dear Noctis?”

He lets go of Noctis, and he crumbles to the floor. He does his best to quiet the gasps and wheezes rattling through his lips as he tries to breathe. His guardi—Ardyn crouches down before him; his boots sparkle underneath the florescent lighting. Noctis wheezes again when Ardyn gently touches his cheek. His fingers burn Noctis’s cheekbones.

“Now then,” he says. “It is time to go home.”

Two years and a half is not enough time to forget what has been carved deep into the white of his bone for his entire existence.

Noctis obeys.

 

*

_noctis, my little prince_

_noctis,_

_noctis, you are loved_

_noc_

 

*

 

He’s being dragged through thick forestry. He hears little signs of wildlife, and a part of him thinks they are terrified of Ardyn’s presence. Noctis doesn’t blame them. If he had the chance, if he had the willpower, he, too, would make himself as scarce as possible whenever his g—Ardyn came anywhere near him.

Noctis says nothing as he’s pulled alongside Ardyn. He doesn’t even touch the ground, not really, only skims it with his toes, as Ardyn pulls him in such a tight grasp, he’s lifted from the floor. They reach an area where wildlife recedes to the asphalt of a bridge, and Noctis spots the dark outline of an idle car. Waiting for them. He breathes, but there’s no breath left in his chest.

Ardyn removes his bruising (always, always bruising, always _hurting_ ) grip on Noctis’s forearm, digs out car keys from his pocket, and motions to the backseat. “Get in the car, guppy.”

The vehicle beeps as it’s unlocked. Noctis bites his lip.

“Did I stutter?” Ardyn narrows his eyes. “Get. In the. Car.”

He doesn’t move.

“Now, Noctis.”

Noctis breathes. His lungs rattle. “No.”

Ardyn quirks an eyebrow, echoes, “No?” in a dramatic tone, like a parent might overexaggerate with their toddler. “My little guppy is saying _no_ to me?”

Noctis swallows. Something jagged and sharp curls in the middle of his throat. He nods instead of speaks; digs his fingers into his palm hard enough it breaks skin. A light, stinging pain spreads over his hands. His feet are weeping in pain. His calves burn. It’s still not enough to stop his shivers in the face of his gua—Ardyn’s displeasure.

“Must you insist on prolonging this tantrum, my dear?” Ardyn questions him in the soft, exasperated tone of a single parent talking to their child who never behaves. “Please get in the car, little guppy. You know this is what’s best for you.”

_He’s doing what’s best for you._

Noctis hunches forward; his cheeks burn. He hates how small and insignificant Ardyn can make him feel in only a few words.  He hates the word _little_ , hates the way it burrows under his veins, makes his skin crawl and shudder in uncomfortable ways when falling off Ardyn’s tongue. He hates that it’s instinct to make himself small and quiet and unnoticeable.

~~he hates the hands that always reach and reach and reach out and harm and harm and _harm_~~

“You know what’s best for me?” Noctis asks, quietly, but there’s something wrong with his voice. It’s too dull, it’s too blank. There is no life there.

His guardian—Ardyn smiles. “Always, my little guppy.”

 _“Just because he thinks it’s best,”_ the echo of Prompto is saying, _“. . . doesn’t mean it’s right.”_

Noctis breathes. His heart screams in his throat. But he doesn’t move. His ears pop with the sound of running water. After a quick glance, Noctis spies the stream down below, and Ardyn tracks his gaze.

He tuts. “Don’t be ridiculous, Noctis. You know very well you aren’t a Mer, and that you cannot swim at all.”  

Noctis takes a step closer to the edge.

“Are you trying to _drown_ , you daft child?” Ardyn barks out; a grating sound that makes Noctis still in place. “Come here. In the car. _Now_. I’m tired of this little game of yours, guppy; it is late. I bet those heathens haven’t fed you yet, hmm?”

His lungs rattle.

(aranea wouldn’t let him leave the crow’s nest in old lestallum until he ate everything on his plate; a simple BLT and fries, but it also included his drink.

“you’re not going to go to sleep hungry, kid,” she says, quiet and somber; but not unkind. aranea has never been unkind when it came to noctis.

“never again.”)

“I . . . they fed me . . ..”

“What? Burgers and fries?” Ardyn sniffs, crosses his arms over his chest. He makes a perfectly stern father scolding a disobedient child. Noctis continues to shrink; wilt. “You know that’s not a proper meal, guppy. Nonetheless, come here.”

Noctis takes another step back. Ardyn’s expression clouds, and he shivers. Thunder crackles above them, and the moonlight is blocked by dark storm clouds. The ground beneath him hums, shudders with each step he takes, but he does not fall. Noctis thinks there is symbolism there, some sort of metaphor; he thinks it is Titan’s way of sending him strength. They are near the Disc of Cauthess, after all (he thinks).

It is not the gods he fears.

_MY BELOVED CHILD._

“Why . . . why did you kidnap me?” Noctis asks over the light downpour. Thunder grumbles above them, a noise that he has never feared unlike most children. Where they cower and hide from the rain, Noctis plays and smiles; steps onto mud-stained paths. “Why . . . why did you, you take me from my home, my . . . my family and, and, and _curse me_ —?”

Noctis has never feared the rain.

“What sort of nonsense have they filled your head with, guppy? Have I taught you _nothing?_ ” Ardyn questions. He takes a step toward Noctis, who takes a step back in response. Ardyn’s eyes are almost narrowed in slits. “How many times must we discuss this? I hadn’t raised you to clamp your hands over your ears when you’re told things you dislike—the curse does not exist, Noctis.”

 _The Stain Should Not Exit, But Does,_ echoes Leviathan.

Thunder crackles.

 _THERE IS A STAIN,_ Bahamut rumbles.

The ground quakes.

“Liar,” Noctis whispers. “You’re lying.”

Ardyn’s calm expression spasms. Noctis is too exhausted to hide his flinch. “Come here, Noctis,” Ardyn whispers, but Noctis hears him perfectly over the rain. No matter how low his guar . . . Ardyn speaks, Noctis will always hear him. “Before your disobedience causes me to act in an unpleasant way for the both of us.”

Noctis tries to breathe. The downpour of the rain drowns the quiet sobs he can’t smother. He’s always crying around his guar—around Ardyn. He used to think that was a normal response. He used to think it was a normal thing for him to shiver, to shake, to curl into a skin that was small and little and _quiet_ whenever he found himself underneath his g—Ardyn’s gaze, under his pursed lips. Used to think that he was supposed to thrive in halls where he drifted, where he existed but never lived, where he suffocated instead of breathed.

Drowned, instead of swam.

 _Come now,_ Ardyn would always say when Noctis cried. _You know I hate it when you cry. I am not the villain here, guppy—but I don’t expect a child to understand, to do what’s best for them . . . which is why, of course,_ you _are the child and_ I _the parent._  

Then, he met Prompto.

He met Prompto, and he learned that not all reaching hands meant to harm. He met Prompto, and learned how gentle a smile could be, how soft a cradling hand felt like. He met Prompto, and Noctis learned what warmth, what safety, what unconditional love feels like; it drapes over his shoulders like a weighted blanket, hums around him like damp soil and the scent of thriving crops, like hot chocolate prepared with peppermint and a teaspoon of sugar, charmed to the perfect temperature, like lips pressed against his forehead, like being tucked against someone’s side and

_YOUR MEMORY REJECTS YOU._

“Noctis,” Ardyn says. Orders. Demands. Noctis jerks forward, pulled by an imaginary string, as if he were a mere puppet, a little marionette, tied to Ardyn’s control, but he digs his heels into the soil; grounds himself by the small sticks that dig into the soles of his feet. “In the car, Noctis,” Ardyn snaps out, frustrated, and so, so enraged.

Something inside Noctis breaks. Perhaps it is a spell. Perhaps, a curse.

_he shatters and_

_breathes and_

( _Shall I Rid the Stain?_ Shiva asked, gently, before she reached out. her touch is not painful. it does not harm.)

“No!”

“Excuse me?”

Ardyn’s voice is so soft, so dangerous, Noctis wants to act like he hasn’t heard him at all. The rain is heavy and deafening, but Noctis has never feared the rain, has never cowered under the roar of a storm.  It is not the Gods he fears.

He has never been afraid of the rain.

_he wants and_

_shatters_

_~~your home is with me~~ _

Noctis stomps his foot; a childish move, but it is freeing all the same.  Noctis had never dared tell Ardyn no before, never dared raise his voice. The consequences might have killed him even more.

_“NO!”_

Noctis finds raised voices unsettling; finds its’ vibrations hang around his neck like a noose. But there is something freeing in tilting his head at Ardyn, at saying, yelling, screaming _no, no, no._

There is power in a scream, in a two-letter word.

“I said, I said . . .,” he stammers out, “I said . . . no.”

Ardyn stills for a moment, a deathly quiet moment where Noctis can only hear the straggling breaths that pull from the hole in his lungs, can only really hear the rain, before his guar—before Ardyn lunges toward him. Noctis screams; topples back towards that precarious edge. Ardyn stops.

“This is not a game, little boy,” Ardyn snarls out. Noctis still wishes Ardyn sounded less like a beleaguered man and more like a nightmare wrapped in pale skin. “Come here, right now. You _will_ obey your father—.”

“You aren’t . . . you’re not my father!” Noctis spits out. He doesn’t think he’s ever sounded so afraid, yet so deafening when speaking to Ardyn.  His shakes are so violent, he thinks his bones are going to pop out of their sockets. “. . . you . . . you _kidnapped me_ —!”

Noctis thinks he is going to die here.

_you are not to return to cape caem._

“And who told you that?” Ardyn huffs a bitter, caustic laugh. Something curls around Noctis’s neck at the sound. It feels like a noose. It feels like his guar—Ardyn’s hands. Hands that have always reached out to harm, but never soothe. “Those bodyguards who reap the benefits of being on my payroll? Or was it a tutor? That _damned witch I told you to stay away from?”_

Noctis trembles, whispers: “Shiva.”  

“I see,” Ardyn says. He sounds far too calm, too collected, for the situation they’re embroiled in. “I _see_. And you believe a goddess few worship over the father who has raised you in both health and sickness?”

Noctis swallows.

“I have sacrificed my life for you.” Ardyn . . . sounds exhausted, sounds wrung out; like he’s been carved open, his ribcage splintered in half for the world to observe. Like all he wanted was to give, only for everything to be taken away. “Was it a Mer who soothed your nightmares? A Mer who taught you to run, and to read, and to count? Was it a Mer who taught you how to properly care for a garden or a household? Was it a Mer who eased your sore throats and your bruised, and scraped knees? Was it, Noctis? Tell me, was it a Mer who raised you when you were _left to_ _?”_

“No,” croaks Noctis.

The fight in him spills into the soil at his feet. It pours out of his throat and dissipates in the rain.

 _He’s only doing what’s best for me_ , Noctis thinks.

His lungs burn.  

_water burns_

_and_

“That’s right . . . that’s _right_ ,” Ardyn replies. He sounds victorious, like he’s already won the battle. Perhaps, he has. Perhaps, this is all in Noctis’s head. “It was _me._ Me, when I could have left you in Leide for an unsavory couple to adopt. Me, who helped you thrive during your infancy when other doctors and nurses spoke of your premature demise.”

Noctis isn’t sure if it’s the rain or his own tears that blurs his vision. He doesn’t really want to know. His world has crumbled twice now. The first, in Cape Caem, when he had been ripped away from the safest place he has ever known. On a Haven in the Vesperpool next, to the Goddess he once called his childhood friend. He thinks his world is going to crumble a third time.

it is not the gods that he fears.

he has always felt safe in the rain.

“It was me,” Ardyn repeats softly. It breaks with emotion, and he clears his throat a moment after. Noctis thinks, almost bewildered, that his guardian . . . that _Ardyn_ is crying. “You know I hate arguing with you, Noctis . . . you know I dislike being the bad parent, but I am not the villain in this story, guppy. I’m only doing what’s best for you, and what’s best for you right now . . . is to get in the car and come home.”

_THE STAIN SHOULD NOT EXIST, YET IT DOES._

Ardyn sighs. “My dear . . . little, stubborn guppy . . ..”

An arm reaches towards him. The rain bellows its’ discontent. It has never been the gods he fears.

“I . . . you . . .,” Noctis swallows. Wheezes. “You, you, you _think_. . . you are d-d-d-doing what’s best for me but . . . but that . . . that doesn’t mean . . ..”

Words curl at the base of Noctis’s tongue. They choke and shiver in the middle of his throat. They burn his teeth. He takes a step forward, sees the victory, the warmth, all the love he could never reach in Ardyn’s eyes, and

_he shatters and_

_he breathes and_

_leviathan visits him and_

“Oh, baby,” Prompto said; that weighted blanket wound tight around Noctis’s shoulders, mug of chocolate clasped in his hands. the drink is always prepared in his favorite mug; there is a miniature carbuncle on it. The light from his fireplace is warm, inviting. “Just because he’s doing what he thinks is best for you, doesn’t mean it’s right. It doesn’t mean what he’s doing isn’t harmful or overwhelming.”

he does not fear the rain.

_MY CHILD._

_noctis breaks and_

_screams_

“The road to hell,” Aranea once commented, lightly, as if they were discussing the weather patterns, back when he is twelve, and she slips a piece of paper in his arms, directions and book titles penned in neat handwriting, “is often paved with good intentions.”

_PRINCE NOCTIS IS_

_the water burns_

_and he_

“You’re wrong,” Noctis says, the firmest he has ever been with his guar . . . with Ardyn. “What you’re doing—it _isn’t_ helping me. You think . . . you think you know what’s best but, but, but you don’t. You don’t know. Not for me.”

Ardyn’s eyes narrow. “What—?”

Noctis moves.

 _“_ Get b . . . _NO, NOCTIS—!”_

Noctis jumps down from the bridge.

_he falls and_

_it is not the rain_

_sha_

The water rushes to him, almost comfortingly, and when he’s crashed down into the stream, he shifts. The sting of the water is only brief. He has experienced worse pain. He wastes little time propelling in some direction. He does not stop even when the stream opens up into the sea. He moves forward, and the currents guide him, protect him.

Noctis swims, and swims, and swims.  

_they look at noctis as if he is_

He swims until he’s aching all over. Until the tingling prickle of pain on his sides starts to become an almost unbearable burning. He doesn’t know where he’s swimming, he knows naught of the waters that he trespasses in his grief, in his panic, in his sorrow. But he swims. He keeps moving. He doesn’t stop. His heart hammers in his throat, a beat he fixes his pace on. He lets his tail (feet?) maneuver him through the unknown, lets his mind guide his frazzled, flustered self to safety.

Safety means going home.

Home means

_he breaks and_

_hands reach and_

He swims until his hands clutch the coarse texture of sand instead of water. Strands of seaweed try to tangle in his hands. The fish who notice him scatter. He sputters, coming up for air despite the fact that as a Mer he doesn’t need to breathe in the same oxygen as humans. But old habits die hard and stubborn. Noctis knows this well, like he knows some of his ingrained behaviors will be ones he will die with.

There is oxygen in the water. It does not burn.  

 

*

 

he wants he wants he

noctis is always wanting.

always breaking.

 

*

 

A storm welcomes him back to Cape Caem.

It’s a cold and biting thunderstorm, the kind that makes people shroud themselves in the safety of their homes, in the comfort of their fireplaces and hot chocolate. It is a storm that makes small children whine and complain, burst into tears. It’s a vicious, raucous rain that whips Noctis back and forth, but the touch isn’t harsh; the pushes aren’t meant to harm. The Stormbringer has always favored the ones who run and play during storms, after all.

Ramuh is yelling at his victory, at his courage.

it is not the gods he fears.

Noctis crawls onto the sand of Cape Caem’s cliffside, of his lighthouse. He shifts back into his legs slowly. There is no rush, after all. There is no danger that waits him on the doorstep of his cottage. ~~Like his family abandoned him~~ Noctis has abandoned the only family he has known. He breathes, whines in the back of his throat. He does his best to

_he shatters and_

_screams and_

A gust of wind curls around him, prompts him to pick himself up and walk the path of the cliffside. Urges him to return to a place where he has found peace, settled his roots and his scattered conscious. Ramuh continues to yell.

But Noctis doesn’t feel courageous. He feels empty, feels like someone has carved his heart out of his chest, placed shattered glass in the absence, and told him to make it beat.

“He is doing what’s best for me,” Noctis mutters like he did in the mirror, blank and empty. The wind howls and writhes in response.

He shudders, wraps his arms around his abdomen. He ignores the fact that, well, he has no clothes. The wind curls around his shoulders, a weight similar to Prompto’s blanket, and it becomes easy to correct himself.

“He . . . he did what, what he _thought_ was best for me . . ..”

 _But that doesn’t make it right_ , the mirage of Prompto says.

“But that doesn’t make it right,” Noctis echoes.

It floats above the cliffside, settles by the lit lighthouse.

He climbs steadily up the path to his cottage. Used as he is to the terrain with no shoes, only the rain slows him down. Not by much, but Ramuh’s celebration _does_ make it difficult for Noctis to see more than a few inches in front of him.

He moves on autopilot. There are no lights on inside his home, and he knows no one is there. They are searching for him, most likely; hunkered down in Prompto’s apartment. Gathering his plastic sheet, he covers his crops and garden from the heavy rainfall. He knows some of them will be bruised, or drowned, but he hopes he can save a few of them. He’ll have to check tomorrow. Satisfied that the sheets are secured properly, he makes his way inside.

The kitchen door is unlocked. It always is; Noctis’s quiet way of telling the Mer that they will always be welcome in his home.

Shivering when he meets cold tile, he turns the thermostat up a few degrees; brings heat inside the house. He’s not hungry. He has to somehow inform Aranea and Loqi that he is safe, that he is not in his guardians—in Ardyn’s grasp.

He rests his palms against his counter. His breath scatters in the quiet air.

“First things first,” Noctis says into the dark. His hair drips on his shoulder. “A shower . . ..”

One of the first things he had done when he moved into Cape Caem was install a bathtub. Ardyn hated those, because it reminded him of the sea—Noctis didn’t really ask, didn’t really care because he didn’t even know bathtubs _existed_ until—. Anyway, he installed it.

 _Well_ , he thinks as he fills it with warm water. Bubbles froth and form. _More like Aranea installed it._

He soaks in the bath for an hour and half. He’ll be similar to a prune when he gets out, he knows, but he _deserves_ a bubble bath.

He dresses in the cactuar-patterned pajamas one of the farmer’s market locals he barters with on the regular gifted him on his birthday; sighs as the silk gently brushes against his skin. He wraps his feet with care, after applying a liberal amount of medicinal lotion he once purchased on a whim by the witch in the Malmalam Thicket.

Guess his whim wasn’t as simple of a whim as he thought.

Prompto’s weighted blanket is still on his bed, and it’s made. His bedroom is clean; laundry put away and folded. There are get well cards and gifts stacked neatly in a corner. This has Ignis written all over it, and Noctis huffs in fond amusement.

His bed is as comfortable, as soft, as he remembers it to be. The weighted blanket grounds him, presses himself back into his bones. His breath does not rattle. Thunder crackles in the distance; rain patters against the window. He curls up into a ball, wrapped like some sort of burrito, and drifts into unconsciousness.

 

*

 

Noctis rises with the sun.

He dresses, makes something that resembles breakfast, and heads out to check on his crops. It’s easy settling back into the routine of Cape Caem, despite all that’s changed, despite his knowledge of his heritage, of who his guar . . . of who Ardyn was. He removes the plastic coverings and makes disgruntled clicks of his tongue as he checks over his little farm.

As he finishes up tending to the garden, his stomach grumbles. Noctis sets the watering can down, wipes his hands on his apron, and heads back inside for an early lunch. He should probably call someone on the house phone, let them know he was here, and safe, and unharmed. But after everything that’s happened in the short span of three days, Noctis just

He wants to breathe. He wants peace. He wants _quiet_. So, he goes about his Tuesday chores. And that means maintaining his garden and crops, and dusting the house even though it’s practically impeccable thanks to Ignis sweeping through in his absence; and it means switching the water and food bowls out for the stray cats he shouldn’t really feed but does anyway, and it means grocery shopping.

 _Then again . . ._ , Noctis stares at his fridge, at his cupboards. He doesn’t think they’ve ever been so full of food before. _Guess I can cross that off my list._

Noctis makes a quick lunch of salmon, rice, and broccoli. He eats quietly, though he finds his gaze straying to the sea; wistful. Now that he has a taste of what had been stolen from him since toddlerhood, he finds the call of the Tide Mother irresistible.

He finishes his salmon first, like he always does whenever he has a fish in his meal (which is, well, always), and begrudgingly pokes at his broccoli. He chews on one slowly when the front door slams open—and promptly chokes.

This is why he doesn’t eat vegetables.

Once he’s certain his tombstone is not going to have _death by vegetable_ engraved on the granite, Noctis looks up to see Prompto in the doorway. From the way he grips the doorknob, Noctis thinks there are going to be deep imprints on the metal.

He hopes doorknobs have insurance.

“Noct?” Prompto whispers. He sounds like he doesn’t believe Noctis is truly there, sitting at his round dining table, eating (choking) broccoli. “Noctis . . . baby, when did you . . .?”

“Last night,” Noctis says around another mouthful of broccoli. _Blegh_. Why is he still eating this? Prompto stumbles inside, the door closing behind him with a protesting creak. “Sorry I didn’t call, I . . . I needed—.”

“Space. Quiet. I understand,” Prompto interrupts softly. He doesn’t sound mad, or irritated, that Noctis hadn’t informed him of his return, He only looks relieved, almost blissfully happy that Noctis is in Cape Caem, in his reach. Safe. “I understand.”

Noctis exhales. “Are you hungry?”

Prompto shakes his head, and then steals a few pieces of Noctis’s broccoli.

They sit in quiet; the noon sun rising slowly. Noctis’s fork scrapes against his empty plate, and he clears his throat. “Um. How is, uh, everyone?”

_he shatters and_

_leviathan visits_

“Hmm, we’ll we’ve put our research on hold for now because . . . well, because you were gone, and we’ve been looking for you,” Prompto explains and then, after a pause, asks, hesitant, “Noctis . . . would you mind explaining to me what . . . what happened on your end? I was able to break the binding spell on me, but I couldn’t find your location. Seems like wherever you were . . . it was guarded tightly.”

The pieces of his heart make a home in his lungs. Noctis swallows around the pieces. It doesn’t work. “I had gone back to my guar . . . to Ardyn’s home.”

Prompto tilts his head, catches the correction. “Ardyn, is it now?”

Noctis closes his eyes. Nods.

“Oh, baby,” Prompto whispers. “Do you want to talk about it?”

_~~your home is with me.~~ _

Noctis shakes his head, then pauses. Nods, and shakes his head again. He settles, after a moment, for a shrug. Prompto stares at him with obvious adoration and amusement; they flutter in his eyes.

“Okay,” he says easily, and stands. Prompto moves around his kitchen with a comfortable familiarity. “Would you like some hot chocolate, baby?”

It’s kind of funny, how a simple word, a quiet term of endearment, can be carved into a sharpened dagger masqueraded as affection, and another be woven and drenched in the warmth and care of a weighted blanket, syllables wrapped around a soft tongue.

It’s so funny, Noctis weeps onto his empty plate.

 

*

 

_he shatters and_

_MY BELOVED CHILD_

_screams and_

_YOU DARE BREAK YOUR OATHS_

 

*

 

_breathes_

*

 

Prompto reaches for him.

Noctis doesn’t flinch.

He never does.

 

*

 

Noctis does not ask about Aranea or Loqi. Prompto never says anything about them, either. He does, however, send Aranea a voicemail at two in the morning, a quick message so she knows he’s safe, that he’s back in Cape Caem. Drifting back into the familiar daily tasks Cape Caem requires of him is easy, a breath of fresh air. His lungs slowly grow back in its’ cavity, stretching and thriving like the flowers he tends to every day, like the roots of the crops he coaxes to a beautiful flourish. There is no danger in Cape Caem.

He is safe here.

_shatters and_

_breathes he_

A new employee manages the desk where Loqi used to sit; her name’s Lunafreya ( _please_ , she says, _call me Luna_ ), and Noctis feels—he feels like he should know her, but he doesn’t, so he smiles awkwardly when she tries to engage in conversation the first initial times he’s walking into Prompto’s shop while she was on shift, does his best not to obviously hunch into himself when the words did not drip off his tongue.

It doesn’t work, most of the time, but Noctis is used to that. He is only truly comfortable around Prompto to speak the way he wishes, after all. Luna understands, however, and soon her attempts to chat dwindle to the briefest of small talk, ones where Noctis can comfortable answer _yes_ or _no,_ too.

He grows to like her quickly. She carries a warmth around her that reminds him, vividly, of Prompto. He thinks she is the daughter of someone important, someone noble, given her posture, of the way she phrases her words, but he never asks, and she never explains.

That’s fine.

Noctis has little want of other people’s history when his own is so jumbled, so knotted together he doesn’t know where it ends and where it begins. He has questions, still. Gentiana did not answer everything. His memories have returned, but they are blurred. There are gaps, blank spaces. He was only a Mer for a year and a few days, after all.

He does discover, though, that Luna favors peach cobbler.

He finds out on a Monday, a bartering day as it always is in Noctis’s world. He’s at the marketplace with other locals, people he has known for almost three years now, but there are unfamiliar faces bobbing and weaving through the crowds. Most of them are dressed in only things a tourist would wear. He makes a face at one mans’ lightning-pattered button down. The design is cool, though, and reminds him of Ramuh. The lime green does not.

He’s already sold and traded most of the things he’d brought. It’s nearing lunchtime, though, and he’s debating whether he should pack up and visit Jaren and Talcott’s stall for a rug to put by his bed or head over to one of the local food trucks for something to eat.

“Oh! Noctis!” Luna’s cheerful greeting floats to his ears. “I wasn’t aware you attended the markets.”

Noctis turns and greets her with a quiet smile. “Y-Yeah. I like to sell my vegetables and fruits . . . sometimes, the fish I catch, too.”

Luna presses a hand to her cheek, and then her gaze lands on the basket of peaches on his table. Her eyes grow so wide, Noctis thinks something is wrong. Is she allergic? Should he call a medic? He doesn’t own an epi pen. Noctis swallows. Is he about to kill Prompto’s newest employee via homegrown peaches?

A migraine forms.

“I love peaches,” Luna breathes out in an elated tone. It sounds like a squeal. “How much for them?”

Noctis blinks for a bit, his heart calming at the knowledge that he isn’t about to commit murder via fruit. “Oh, they don’t really have a price.”

Luna stares. “. . . what?”

Noctis snorts. “Have you gone to this place before?”

Slowly, she shakes her head. “Not often. It’s mostly my brother, as he likes to sell his wood carvings and other such things.”

Noctis makes a curious noise in the back of his throat. “Wood carvings?”

“Mmhmm!” Luna nods. “He’s left for the day, though. He tires often, lately.”

“Ah.” Noctis can relate. “A-Anyway, um . . . most of them I just, uh, trade and barter with others if they want something that I have out.”

Luna makes a thoughtful noise in the back of her throat, stares down at the bowl of peaches, and then looks up at Noctis. Her eyes sparkle. “My mother’s recipe!”

Noctis blinks. “Um.”

With a soft huff of laughter, Luna says, “I can trade with you my mother’s peach cobbler recipe?”

“Peach cobbler . . ..”

“I adore peach cobbler,” she admits, and then frowns sheepishly. “I’m afraid I can’t make it myself, though. I always mess up Mother’s recipe.”

Noctis tilts his head. “Why?”

“Ah . . .,” Luna coughs into her hand, delicately. “I’m afraid I’ve been banned from the kitchen.” Noctis’s eyebrows raise to his hairline, and a deep pink paints the bridge of Luna’s nose. Her freckles stand out. “I’m not much of a cook. Or a baker,” she admits after a pause.

“I, um, can teach you?” Noctis offers and then, at Luna’s slow blink, adds, “Um . . . peach cobbler, I mean.”

Progress. He breathes through a still-repairing lung. Progress is good.

“Really?” Luna leans forward excitedly, and grabs hold of Noctis’s hand. “Would you really?”

“Yeah,” Noctis wheezes out. He isn’t used to people bursting through his personal bubble, unless they came in the shape and form of Prompto.

Luna understands what the wheeze means because she drops his hands, scoots back a little. Noctis sends her an appreciative smile.

Once she regains her composure, she clears her throat. “When are you free? To bake the recipe, I mean?”

“Whenever, really,” Noctis shrugs. It’s not like he has a fast-paced and cramped schedule anymore. He has the room to breathe, to make sudden changes if needed. There is no one who pulls him from place to place, tie shoes he dislikes on his feet, demand he sit here and read this, fix that plate. Sit straight, Noctis, for _gods sake_ —

He coughs into his hand. Breathes. “And . . . can it be in Prompto’s apartment?”

He’s comfortable enough around Luna; he trusts her. But the cluttered apartment Prompto lives in will always, always be his safest space.

“The Witch-King’s?” Luna blinks. “It would depend on him, I suppose.”

Noctis shrugs a little. “Don’t think he’ll mind.”

 

*

 

Prompto doesn’t mind, but that’s probably to do with him entering his apartment only to see Luna covered from head-to-toe in flour and blueberries. Noctis didn’t even know Prompto had blueberries in his fridge. They were not in her mother’s peach cobbler recipe either. Prompto lasted a few minutes, though, before his laughter became too much to swallow. Prompto’s arm is wrapped around his stomach; he has been laughing for four minutes now.

“Ha, ha,” Luna says blandly. Egg white drips from her bangs. Noctis thinks he probably shouldn’t have given her the electrical mixer. Or the knife. Or the dough. Or the— “Very _funny_. I’m laughing, truly, I am.”

Prompto’s cackles rise.

Noctis hides his own amusement by checking on the boiling peaches.

Luna huffs. “May I use your restroom?”

Prompto waves her in its’ direction, still laughing. Luna leaves flour marked footprints on his wooden floors.

“What are you two making?” Prompto asks as his snickers dwindle. “We can smell it from downstairs, and it’s making me hungry.”

“Peach cobbler,” Noctis says, and then eyes the mess on the kitchen table. He grimaces. “Well . . . we’re trying. Um. Sorry about the mess.”

Prompto flicks flour in his direction. “It’s no trouble at all, Noctis.”

Noctis licks his lips. _Make No Trouble_. He breathes.

Luna returns to kitchen, flour and blueberry free. A sprig of parsley sits in her hair, though. Noctis . . . Noctis doesn’t know where the parsley came from. She re-ties the apron around her waist, and plants her hands on her hips. “Well,” she says to them, to the kitchen, to the chaotic mess she created on Prompto’s kitchen table when all Noctis asked was for her to stir the wet ingredients, slowly add in the dry. “I am ready for the next step.”

Noctis shares a look with Prompto. Luna pouts when their laughter begins anew, but she joins them a few seconds in anyway.

After the peach cobbler is baked and eaten, after Prompto orders them all takeout, after Luna has thanked Noctis and left with both a piece for her brother and her mother’s recipe, Noctis plops down on the couch and makes a content noise when he curls around the weighted blanket.

Gods, he _loves_ this blanket.

Prompto touches his elbow, gently. Noctis makes a noise in the back of his throat. He thinks he sounds like a wilting root.

“Have you thought about when you’re going to tell the others?” Prompto asks. Noctis shakes his head.

He wants peace. He wants quiet. He wants

“That’s fine—hey, take your time. There’s no rush.”

Prompto picks up his knitting needles and takes a seat next to him. Noctis watches him work on whatever it is that he’s knitting—he thinks it’s another sweater, because unlike the first one, this one has blue yarn—listens to him charm it quietly.

He falls asleep at some point, lulled into unconsciousness by the warmth of Prompto’s fireplace, by the soft residue of Prompto’s charms in the air, by the quiet hum of Prompto’s voice. He sleeps through the night on that couch, in that blanket.

Nightmares do not find him here.

 

*

 

_water burns_

_and_

_it is not the rain he_

 

*

 

Noctis doesn’t shift when he’s in Cape Caem.

He’s too close to the Mer Kingdom he is the Prince of, too close to people who believe he should live with his brethren permanently. Noctis doesn’t want that. He doesn’t ever want to be chained to another place, another house.

Prompto takes him to Galdin Quay. Mer don’t really live there anymore. If they do, it’s deep in Galdin Sea, far from where humans and other tourists spend their vacation. It’s perfect because no one pays attention to Noctis or to Prompto as they slip away from their hotel room, nearing what a lot of humans like to call “the witching hour” (though Coctura likes to send him little smirks and knowing glances whenever they return, but Noctis doesn’t really get what she’s trying to tell him or imply), and into the bay lit by underwater lights. Prompto sometimes goes into the water with him, placing a charm on himself to breathe underneath the water for a few hours, but, for the most part, Noctis is left to his devices as Prompto watches him from the safety of Galdin’s docks.

It's on such a trip that Noctis finds a Mer who lives in Galdin Shoals. It’s not quite as dark out in Galdin Quay, but it’s dim enough that most of the tourists have packed up their belongings and trudge towards their cars or the hotel snug in the Mother of Pearl restaurant. After they’ve eaten dinner, they head to the bay.

Coctura waves them goodbye, though requests Noctis get her some fish for tomorrow. “I’ll make you a new dish,” she promises, and, honestly, Noctis can’t wait. Coctura’s dishes are sometimes enough to make Noctis want to permanently move to Galdin Quay.  

Prompto makes himself comfortable on the fishing dock. “Have fun,” he says as Noctis settles waist deep in the water. “Try not to get lost, kay?”

Noctis scowls. “That happened _once_ , Prompto.”

Prompto snickers.

Noctis splashes him a little, and then ducks under the water to shift. The warmth of Galdin Sea soothes the slight itch of his scales once he’s shifted. A sound vibrates in the back of his throat as he sinks deeper under the water that surrounds Galdin Quay. He thinks it’s the Mer equivalent of a purr.

He swims for a bit, unbothered. Most of the fish sense that he is no threat, and some of them brush against him. The others ignore he is there.

He’s watching a baby cuttlefish near some coral some minutes into his night swim when a clicking tongue grasps his attention. From the corner of his eye, he spots the ends of a drifting tail—soft orange stripes that fade to a darker green brown; a pattern he knows to be from a Murk Grouper—as the Mer circles around him in a curious manner.

Noctis swallows.

“An’ what’s a fry doin’ all alone here?” an unfamiliar voice questions, and Noctis turns to see a dirty blond-haired Mer frowning at him. “Ain’t you a little _too_ young to be out here by yourself?”

“Um . . .,” Noctis stares. He bites his lip. “Um.”

The Mer laughs a little. “Don’ worry, don’ worry—I’m just a little worried, is all. Most fry’re in their Hatcheries at this hour.”

“Oh.” Noctis blinks. “Um . . . I’m, um, v-visiting the, uh, the Quay.”

“Visiting?” The Mer echoes, tilting his head. “With your Pod?”

Noctis’s tail twitches. “S-Something like that.”

The Mer narrows his eyes. “Say, kid. What’s your name?”

Noctis squeaks out a random string of sounds before he clears his throat. “What’s – what’s yours?”

“Dino,” the Mer replies; he’s giving Noctis quite an alarmed expression. “And you?”

“N-N . . . Noct,” Noctis says. “Um. Nice to . . . meet you.”

When Dino says nothing, does nothing, except stare, Noctis prepares himself to bolt towards the fishing docks of the Quay. He’s, like, five minutes away from Prompto. He can make it. Probably. Then Dino says, “ _Shit_ , kid. I know Lucis Caelum’s have a slower lifespan than most Mer but—I know it’s not _that_ slow.”

Noctis sputters. His breath halts.

“Kid, word of advice? You don’t want a Mer to know who you are? _Don’t_ give them a shortened version of a name no one else but you have.” Dino pinches the bridge of his nose. And then, under his breath, mutters, “Tide Mother, give me strength.”

Noctis sputters again.

Dino sighs, and then stares at him in a new light. For a short moment, Noctis wonders if he’s about to get kidnapped under water. Can he outswim a Murk Grouper? Noctis swallows. Probably . . . not.

“Tell ya what, let’s make a deal,” Dino says after a pause, folding his arms over his chest. “I want ya to find this stone for me.”

Of all things, that wasn’t what Noctis expected. _Well_ , he amends. _He’s not getting kidnapped . . . hopefully._

“Where . . . where is this jewel?” Noctis questions.

“Longwythe,” Dino tells him. “The Peak, not the Rest Area, mind.”

“I knew that,” says Noctis when he, in fact, did not.

Dino gives him an imperious stare. “So? We gotta deal, kid?”

Noctis crosses his arms over his chest. There’s something about Dino that makes him want to hiss, makes him want to flick his tail and swim away. “Why?” he asks instead. “Why should I get this . . . stone, for you?”

Dino smiles. It’s not a kind one, but it isn’t a harsh one either. Neutral. Some of Noctis’s tension leaves him, but most remain. “Less you want the entire Mer Kingdom knowing you can shift back and that, well, you’re quite the fry, you’ll do it.” Dino’s grin grows at Noctis’s disgruntled expression. “People’ll pay a pretty shel for this story, you see. A grown Mer has to eat, Highness.”

Noctis growls low in his throat. He wishes they went to the Vesperpool instead.

In exchange for his silence, Dino wants a jewel. Noctis accepts his terms (what else can he do?) and comes to the surface where Prompto waits.

Catching sight of his expression, Prompto gets to his feet. “Everything okay? Want me to swim with you for a bit?”

Noctis shakes his head. He shifts back when Prompto helps him onto the doc, and makes quick work changing into clothes. Last thing he wants to do know is accidentally flash someone even though there are few outside at this hour. Prompto waits for him to explain, and Noctis blows an irritated raspberry.

Curls his fingers through Prompto’s, squeezes them. He is safe here.

“So, uh.” Noctis stops. His shoulders hunch. Prompto makes a soft, encouraging noise for him to continue. “Okay, so . . . well . . . I think I was, like, just threatened?”

“What.”

Noctis explains what happened quickly, and he makes sure to have a sturdy grip on Prompto’s hands, so the other teen won’t fling himself into the bay to fight Dino himself. _He would do it_ , Noctis thinks to himself with no short amount of amused fondness.

“Wow,” Prompto drawls out once he’s done, sending a fierce glower at the Quay. “Extorting a child? How unpleasant.”

Noctis makes a face. “I’m _not_ a child.”

“Baby,” Prompto says, no less fond than he always is, chin propped up on his hands. “In this form, you’re a legitimate _infant_.”

Noctis dips a hand into the bay, grabs hold of a passing fish—a Lucian Catfish—and flings it directly at Prompto’s face. At the sound of Prompto’s squeals and whines, he thinks, victoriously, _who’s the infant, now?_

  

*

 

They set out for northern Leide in the morning, after they’ve eaten breakfast. Coctura gives them a few potions before they leave, “just in case”. Dino’s quest lines in their favor as Prompto has business to do in the Longwythe Rest Spot. There was a problem with the local dualhorn territories, and the locals wanted him to see what was causing their distress.

The problem’s an easy fix—sort of. A Behemoth had been causing their distress, and Prompto heads to the Crow’s Nest to offer a reward of 3,000 gil for any Hunter who kills it. The Behemoth is dead before Noctis sits down to eat a sandwich for lunch.

After they eat, it’s time to look for Dino’s stone.

Longwythe Peak, where the Amethyst stone is said to be, is a crag in the weaverwilds of central Leide. It’s technically a landmark, but no one really knows what it actually is nor how it got there. Some speculate it’s where the goddess Eos slumbers, her body curled into the shape Longwythe Peak makes; others think it’s a scattered shard from the meteorite Titan had caught.

The origins and composition of it are a mystery to geologists, but it’s a popular spot for tourists. Quite a few “Longwythe” tourist shops are stationed by the roads.

Noctis stares at the jutting spirals, at the height of what some remark to be an ancient Adamantoise. Noctis hopes the Peak is not, in fact, a giant fucking turtle.

Prompto snickers at his expression, and then pokes his side until he starts moving. Dino wasn’t sure where the stone was, exactly, only that it was by the Peak. Noctis prepares himself for a long day spent underneath the glare of Leiden’s sun.

It’s nearing two in the afternoon when Prompto calls for a much-needed water and snack break. They hunker down somewhere near a dilapidated shack that spoke of pre-kingdom days in Lucis. Nearby, two coeurl cubs play with one another but Noctis isn’t worried. He can tell they’re shifters. If they were actual coeurls, they would be deep in their nests rather than out in the open.

A few feet away, a man scours the ground for something. He finds it within a few minutes, and then looks up at the shutter-click of Prompto’s camera as he takes photos of the Peak.

“Well, I’ll be!” The man drops a nametag at the sight of Noctis. His tone is cheerful, and light, but Noctis still tenses. Prompto shifts slightly, places a hand on Noctis’s arm. A warning. The man stays where he is. “Noctis? Little Noctis, is that you?”

His tongue sours a little. “Y-Yeah . . . um, who are you?”

“Ah. You wouldn’t remember me, you were too young,” the man clears his throat, and then holds his hand out for a shake. Noctis does. “Dave. Dave Auburn.”

Noctis blinks.

Prompto tilts his head. He, at least, recognizes the man before them. “Ah—the hunter?”

“Yes, that’s me,” Dave laughs a little, and then his eyes roam over Noctis’s figure. “I’m glad you’re lookin’ well, Noctis. Been a while since I’ve seen you in Leide. How’s that Daddy of yours doin’? Still wearin’ those funny hats?”

Noctis can’t he can’t

_your home is with_

_he’s only doing what_

_NO, NOCTIS_

“I’m sorry,” Prompto interrupts smoothly; his smile is a personified dagger. He curls a steady hand around Noctis’s wrist. “But we’re quite busy at the moment. Was there something you needed?”

Dave falters. He looks perplexed at the hostility Prompto exudes, at the way Noctis struggles to breathe in the dusty air of Leide. Wind blows around them; not unkind, but not gentle. Noctis exhales.

“A-Alright,” Dave nods and clears his throat. “I’ve got some nametags to return, anyhow.”

“You do that,” Prompto says, though the sharpness has softened a little. Noctis has no idea what the dog tag necklace in Dave’s hands means. He thinks he knows, but he doesn’t really want it to be confirmed. “Y’all have a good day, now.”

“We will,” Noctis manages to say.

He remains tense and stiff far after Dave has left their proximity. Prompto wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulls him against his side. Noctis tries to breathe, but his lungs are still shattered; still an echo of what they should be.

“Baby, you wanna head back to the rest spot?” Prompto questions. “I don’t mind looking for the stone myself . . . or we could do it later. I don’t mind.”

Noctis exhales.

Recovery is not linear.

He shakes his head. “No – no, I’d like to keep going.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

They find the stone within the hour. It’s a small thing of blue that sparkles under the sun. Noctis holds it in a tight grip as they walk back to the Rest Spot. It’s almost dinner time, edging into the late afternoon, and they decide it’ll be easier on them to stay at the Rest Spot and head out the next morning. His stomach grumbles a little as he all-but collapses on their motel bed.

Prompto makes a sympathetic noise. “Wanna order in?”

“Yes, please,” Noctis says into the blanket. It’s not the same as the weighted one back in Caem, but it does what it needs to. Within seconds, Noctis is a comfortable burrito.

When dinner rolls around, Prompto sweeps out of the motel room and returns a few moments later with two plates of Kenny’s Salmon and Kenny’s Fries from the Crow’s Nest. It’s not the same as the salmon he’ll sometimes catch at the docks, not the same as how Ignis prepares his fish, but it’s still a delicious meal Noctis digs in eagerly to.

He even eats the steamed carrots.

The next morning, they head back to Galdin. Noctis hopes Dino hasn’t already told the whole Mer kingdom news of his shift, of how small he is as a Mer.

Fortunately, he hasn’t.

The Mer’s out by where the ferries take people to Altissia. Lounging on one of the couches, he smiles at their entrance. “Ah,” Dino says. “If it ain’t my two-favorite people.”

Prompto rolls his eyes.

Noctis hands Dino the stone. “There,” he says before he sticks his hands in his pockets. “Are you . . . are you gonna tell people now?”

Prompto starts glaring, but there’s no need. Dino’s already shaking his head.

“Wait a moment,” he tells them, and then weaves the stone into some sort of bracelet. He holds it out to Noctis a few minutes later, presses it into his hands when all he does is blink. “Wear that when ya want to swim by yourself. Won’t do much, but it’ll . . . ah, send out a beacon to any Mer in the area if ya need help.”

Noctis blinks. “Oh.”

Dino shrugs. “It won’t come off if you shift, either. Unless, ya know, ya take it off yourself.”

Prompto hums at the stone, and then smiles warmly at Dino. “You’re not half bad, for a journalist.”

Dino snorts. “Neither are you, Majesty.”

Sometimes, Prompto and Noctis travel to the Vesperpool. The small Mer settlement that lives there are always willing to watch Noctis while Prompto does his errands, sees to the needs of other witches in the area. The Grouper Mer stills asks Noctis if he’d like for her to eat “one of those two-legs.” Sania sends them with a request for rainbow frogs, once, and Navyth floats behind her with a vehement shake of his head. They never stay for more than a few days, a few nights; Noctis is too terrified of his g . . . of Ardyn taking him away. Prompto never says it but feels the same.

Noctis doesn’t dare ask to go near Alstor Slough. Prompto steers clear of northern Duscae regardless.

Besides Aranea and Loqi, who were there to witness it originally, besides the Mer who live deep in the Vesperpool waters, Prompto is the first and, for a short while, _only_ person who knows his curse is gone. It’s not like Noctis means to keep it a secret but communicating with others has always been difficult for him even when it didn’t involve him personally. Prompto respects like, even without Noctis stuttering a reply, and behaves accordingly.

Noctis needs time to settle back into himself. He needs time to undo what Ardyn has chained through the narrow gaps of his ribs. He needs to breathe, and he knows that he won’t get those chances once it becomes revealed that he can shift into a Mer, becomes known that as a Mer he’s . . . well, in Prompto’s words, “a fetus.”

(noctis pulled him into the water by the ankles for that)

He waits, quietly, like he always does, for the other shoe to drop.

 

*

 

Noctis has been back in Cape Caem for almost a month and a half, but the other Mer don’t make an appearance. He knows they’re in contact with Prompto, and it’s from him that he knows they are stuck in the Mer Kingdom.

“There’s a lot of tension right now,” Prompto explains that morning. “There’s not, like, a war or anything, but, well . . . in their eyes, you were kidnapped. Again.” Noctis makes a noise, and he thinks it’s an understanding one. “You see, they’re all in council meetings and such, combing through the security of the cliffs.”

Noctis draws a shape out of his ketchup with his french-fry. Ignis would probably have something short of coronary if he knew Noctis was eating partially cold french-fries for breakfast. “Why, though?”

“You were safe . . . back in their grasp, in a way,” Prompto shrugs, stares at the ring of coffee stains on his table. “And then you were gone. Again.”

 Noctis hums. He guesses he can understand.

It’s a Tuesday evening. Noctis sits at the dock, and it creaks a little beneath his weight. He makes a noise at the sound, making a mental note to head into town tomorrow for supplies to fix it. Last thing Noctis wants is to fish only to find himself falling through a hole.

He catches a few Groupers, a Catfish, a few Barramundi and a salmon. He replenishes his fishing line and—

Nyx pops up in front of him with a loud splash.

Noctis screams before nailing the Captain right in the face with his fishing rod. It clatters to the seafloor. A strangled noise escapes Noctis’s throat as he clutches the front of his shirt. Why does it have to be his fishing docks?

“Uh. Sorry?” Noctis winces the longer Nyx stares. “I didn’t—.”

_“Noctis!”_

He whips around Iris and the others practically speeding in his direction.

“When did you get back?” Iris demands right as Cor barks out, “Are you alright? Are you injured, Prince Noctis?”

He blinks. In his hands, sits a fishing line. “Uh,” he says. “I’m . . . I’m okay?”

“Are you sure?” Ignis questions. “Or are you just saying that?”

Noctis sputters. “I’m _fine!”_

Gladio hands him his fishing rod. “Here, princess.”

“Thanks,” Noctis mutters, and finishes putting on a new line. In the stark silence that surrounds him, he looks up and blinks at their stares. “What?”

Nyx leans on the dock. It creaks. “Finally accepted the truth, then?”

“Oh,” says Noctis. He scratches his cheek. “That.”

Noctis . . . he doesn’t know how to start this conversation. Instead, he stands, grabs his ice box of fish he’s caught for the day. “I guess you’re all staying for dinner?”

It’s a unanimous _yes_.

Ignis and Cor commandeer the kitchen, and Iris steers him to the living room. Although there’s an obvious tension, dinner is a calm affair. Noctis even eats all of Ignis’s stir fry and doesn’t make too many faces at the vegetables he finds and picks out.

He and Iris do the dishes together; he washes, and she dries them. Nyx puts them away. Noctis doesn’t even have to tell him where to put what anymore.

When everything is cleaned and back in place, Noctis dries his hands, looks over at the living room, and chokes on his spit at the sight of Cor—tall, strong, fierce Cor—lowered on one knee, facing him. A fist is pressed against his heart.

Noctis’s going to faint. He’s going to throw up all of Ignis’s lovely dinner. He makes a strangled sound, like he’s suddenly been smacked across the mouth, and says, “What are you—?”

“I apologize, your Highness,” Cor speaks softly, firmly. He does not look Noctis in the eye. “I have failed you again. Allowed you to be taken when you were safe. For that, I apologize.”

Silence floats between them. Noctis looks at the other Mer, and he finds that they, too, are on their knees. A part of him doesn’t know what to say. Another wants to go into the little basement beneath the lighthouse.

“I . . . please.” Noctis takes a breath. “Please, get up. There’s . . . I’m not mad at you. I don’t – it’s not your fault,” he ends in a firm tone.

A suspiciously Prompto-like voice says, in the back of his mind, _it’s not yours either_.

Noctis ignores it.

They still kneel. Noctis decides to go for a drastic measure and says, “If you don’t get up, I’m literally going to vomit all over you.”

They get up.

Noctis snickers at their disgruntled expression, though makes his own face when Ignis makes him take anti-nausea medicine.

They pile into his living room, and don’t complain when Noctis watches _Iron Chef_ on repeat. Ignis, though, makes noises whenever he sees a chef touch food without gloves, or doesn’t wear a hairnet. As the day dwindles down to nine in the evening, Noctis gets up and stretches. Makes his way to the stairs.

“So,” Noctis says, exactly five minutes before he normally goes upstairs for bed; one foot is poised on his steps as the Mer who have sworn to die for him if needed blink in his direction, prompt him to continue. “The curse broke. I’m, like, a baby Mer when I shift. Good night.”

“Wait,” says Iris, wide-eyed. “What?”

Cor straightens. Nyx is half out of his seat already. “Your Highness?” they both call, sharply.

Noctis is taking the stairs two-steps at a time. “Good night!”

_“Noctis!”_

He snickers at the chaos he leaves downstairs and gets ready for bed.

 

*

_you are not to_

 

*

 

His seventeenth-year dawns quiet. Noctis doesn’t like to remember how he had spent most of his sixteenth. It’s a Thursday, so that means he needs to check the lighthouse for any repairs, see if the fox-shifter family need anything. He’s eager to fish at sunset. He knows, realistically, that he’s probably going to be interrupted.

Noctis rises with the sun. Ignis makes him a full breakfast—eggs, and toast, and bacon. He doesn’t get hot chocolate, but he does get a cup of tea. It’s delicious. He eats most of it, and Ignis ruffles his hair as a result. Cor sends him a smile.

Progress.

As Noctis picks his way through the lighthouse, Gladio joins him. They work together quietly. Though giving him an odd look, Gladio doesn’t ask why Noctis googles whatever problems he comes across rather than call for a mechanic.

The rest of the day passes slowly. Locals pop in and out of his cottage, bearing smiles and well-wishes and homemade gifts. Noctis is going to have an entire shelf full of apple pie once the day is over with, but he doesn’t complain.

As the evening approaches, he half-heartedly leaves the fishing docks for the celebration in his living room. There’s cake. Another feast Ignis somehow managed to cook. Honestly, Noctis would’ve been fine with salmon and rice.

Prompto plops a box on Noctis’s lap when he sits in the living room. “Go on,” Prompto laughs. “Open it! Open it!”

Noctis does. And stares. Inside the box sits seven sweaters. All of them are knitted, and they don’t share the same colors. When he picks one up—a blue one—it hums beneath his fingertips. The softness of Prompto’s magic curls into the fabric, brushes against the palms of Noctis’s hands.

_you are safe here._

Noctis smiles. It’s wide and bright. It hurts his cheeks, a little bit, but he doesn’t complain. “Thanks, Prompto,” he says, holding the sweater close to his chest. He’s tempted to strip and put it on right then and there, but he’s not sure that’s appropriate, birthday or otherwise. “Thank you.”

Prompto presses their cheeks together. Noctis melts, like he always does. “No problem, baby,” Prompto murmurs, and then winks conspiratorially at him. “There’s more where that came from, don’t cha worry!”

Noctis, knowing the sheer amount of yarn Prompto collects on a basis, has a moment to wonder if everything in his wardrobe is about to be replaced by knitted things. He’s not sure that’s a bad idea. He’s surrounded by people who love him, by people who are kind, and warm, and don’t scold him for his hunched posture.

He’s surrounded by warmth.

_~~he still misses his guardian.~~ _

It is enough.

 

*

 

a part of him, a dark part he never lingers on, wishes his curse had never been broken.

 

*

 

The Mer King arrives on a Wednesday morning.

It’s a bartering day, in Noctis’s peaceful (to an extent) world. A few days after he turns seventeen, Noctis looks out of his opened kitchen window, and drops his basket of green apples on his foot. Making a pained hiss at the jarring, sharp pain in his foot, Noctis picks up the basket. Thankfully, the apples remained inside.

Some Wednesdays, Noctis barters with the locals in the mornings. Others, he tends to go out in the afternoons or late evenings. He likes to switch it up every couple of weeks. Prompto likes to join him whenever he goes out to the markets in the evenings, so that’s the plan for today.

A Mer King’s visit is not in those plans.

Noctis doesn’t trade with his own crops, not like he does on Mondays and Fridays, but with the things he makes from them. Today’s going to be his special Caem Apple pie.

He blows a raspberry as he spies the Mer King, flanked by two other Mer, make his way up the cliffside, through the path to his kitchen door.

When the man knocks, Noctis almost tells them to leave. He supposes he’s being a little harsh, a little juvenile, but

_he is doing what’s best for me_

Noctis shakes his head, sets the basket of apples down on the counter. He wipes his sweaty hands on the apron tied around his waist and opens the kitchen door.

Faced with an older man who looks like him, Noctis can’t quite breathe right. His lungs are still in disrepair.

“Good morning,” King Regis Lucis Caelum CXIII greets quietly. His voice isn’t what Noctis assumed; there is no boom, no loud power. The man who gave Noctis half his DNA speaks in a quiet and firm tone of voice. Noctis doesn’t want to know what he sounds like when he yells. “I hope we’ve not caught you at a bad time?”

Noctis shakes his head.

The men eye the shaking grip he has on the doorknob in doubt.

“I . . .,” Noctis swallows down his unease. “Hello. Um. C-Can I . . . can I help . . . you?”

King Regis smiles. It’s a gentle one, a _kind_ one. It makes Noctis’s ribs constrict, makes them shrivel and decay right in his body.

_leviathan visits him_

_and_

“I don’t know if you’re aware of who I am,” King Regis says, “but I’m your father—Regis Lucis Caelum.”

“Oh,” he says, instead of what he really wants. “Um. Hi.”

A part of Noctis, the part that still feels like a gaping, hollow wound, wants him to say _no, you’re not my father._ Noctis breathes around the glass in his throat. It has not gotten easier.

Recovery is not linear, he reminds himself. It manifests in different ways.

“Please,” Noctis opens the door, beckons them inside. “Please, come in. Would you like anything to drink, um, y-your M-Majesty?”

How does one address royalty when they are your parents? Is he supposed to bow? Is he supposed to _kneel_?

Noctis has a sudden urge for hot chocolate, for a blanket he curls around his shoulders. His breakfast threatens to spill out of his throat.

“You don’t need to call me that, Noctis,” the King tells him. His smile is still kind, if a little sad, a little in awe of the teen who places his trembling hands on a doorknob.

“Um . . ..”

Regis understands his unsaid question, and motions to his companions. “This is Clarus Amicitia, my Shield.” Noctis gives the mountain of a man a nod, which is returned. Noctis swallows down the wheeze in his throat. “And this is my advisor, Weskham Armaugh.”

“It is a pleasure to see you again, your Highness,” greets Weskham after a proper bow that would’ve made his tutors weep from delight.

Noctis opens his mouth, but nothing is said. A noise escapes him instead, a strangled sound, and he wraps his arms tight around his waist; grips his fingers around the strings of his apron. He stares at the floor in the face of their worried looks. “R-Right,” he finally says. “. . . hi.”

Noctis breathes through his nose.

_Recovery is not linear._

He makes them snacks, things that keep his shaking hands busy. As he does, King Regis asks him questions—about the farm, about the lighthouse, about how he likes it here in Cape Caem. Noctis answers the best that he can. Then, they start talking about the things Noctis enjoys. The list isn’t that long.

“You like to fish?” says King Regis.

His lips twitch in a way that suggests he is hiding an amused smile. Clarus clears his throat. Weskham’s eyes crinkle.

Noctis gets it. He knows the irony of a Mer who likes to fish . . . as a human. It’s just not the _same_ , he wants to say. The Mer at the Vesperpool taught him how to hunt properly, through tag and other games his gua . . . Ardyn dismissed as childish whims. There was a thrill, of course, a sense of satisfaction whenever he managed to catch something with a quick swipe of his clawed fingers, but . . . it just wasn’t the same.

Prompto bursts through his front door with a bright, stunning grin. He’s holding a box in his hands. A hint of something yellow pokes out on top. It looks like a strand of yarn. “Hey, Noct,” he’s saying in a singsong tone, “look what I—!”

He stops, abruptly, at the sight in Noctis’s kitchen. Noctis deflates against the counter at his entrance. “Hi, Prompto.”

 _Thank the gods you’re here_ , he doesn’t say, but he’s pretty sure everyone hears it regardless.

“Witch-King,” greets King Regis Lucis Caelum CXIII.

Prompto’s smile is full of teeth. “King Regis.”

Noctis wonders if it’s too late to live in his lighthouse. It probably is, knowing how his luck goes most of the time.  

He still doesn’t really understand the significance of _Witch-King_ , of the invisible crown perched in Prompto’s curls, but he doesn’t truly need to. He’s in no rush to figure it out.

Prompto is, and always will, be Prompto to Noctis.

 

*

 

Noctis is starting to think his fishing dock is a catalyst, some sort of metaphor, something symbolic, that represents the way people have moved themselves into his life once he’s stepped foot into Cape Caem and set off a chain of events that can never be undone.

He grumbles at the impressive crowd a few feet before him. They stare at him, eyes wide and shocked. They care little for their bare skin, and Noctis has half a mind of throwing his bait box at them for scaring away the fish.

He was _so close_ to getting that thrice-damned Dark Allural Sea Bass. He knows he could shift and catch it as a Mer, but it’s not the _same_.

“Prince Noctis,” one of them booms.

Noctis hisses like one of the stray cats he feeds, like Nyx does whenever Cor takes away his sardines (which, honestly, Noctis understands because sardines are _gross_ ). Somewhere behind him, Cor hides his laugh in a cough.

“Take us to the Witch-King, your Highness,” says another.

They ignore his disgruntled expression.

Noctis twitches, grips his fishing rod tighter. There is a parallel here, somewhere. “At least,” he says in a weary, put-upon tone. He kind of wishes he had the confidence, the strength, to snap at them, to screech his irritation. “Put on some pants.”

Nyx does not bother hiding his snickers.

When he enters Prompto’s shop for the first time that day, it’s with a crowd tailing his steps. Luna makes a noise at the sight of Noctis’s new shadows, raises an eyebrow, quietly asks, “Is everything alright, Noctis? Do you know those men?”

There’s a _do you want me to get rid of them_ in her voice. Noctis shakes his head. Not for the first time, he wonders what Luna is, of what she is capable of. He knows to never blindly trust appearances, his guard . . . Ardyn notwithstanding, because like Prompto, Luna is sweet and full of soft smiles, gentle eyes that crinkle when she laughs.

Prompto is the Witch-King. His magic alone rejuvenates the runes and wards at the bases of Cape Caem’s property.

For all her kind disposition, Noctis knows Luna is a hurricane in her own right. Even though he still has no idea who she really is. He doesn’t really care.

“I’m alright,” he replies, knowing his verbal reply will calm her. “Is Prompto upstairs?”

Luna nods. Her gaze never strays from Noctis as he leads the men ( _councilmen_ , he corrects) to the hidden staircase.

Prompto’s knitting something new when they all pool into his little foyer. Noctis awkwardly stands in front of the living room. His fingers twitch around their hold on his jacket sleeves. Prompto opens his mouth to greet him, looks up from the pile of yarn on his lap, and blinks at what he sees.

Noctis coughs a little.

“May I help you gentlemen?” Prompto questions in an even tone. There’s a look in his eyes that makes Noctis think he already knows what they are there for. At least, Noctis thinks, someone does. Gods knows Noctis is practically clueless about things that doesn’t involve what he likes.

“We would like to discuss Prince Noctis’s living arrangements,” one of the men states after a respectful bow to Prompto.

Mournfully, Noctis thinks back to the bass he failed to catch, and wonders if he could run away like it did.

He knows he can’t.

Prompto sets his yarn and needles down on the coffee table and motions for the men to follow him into his dining room area. Noctis seldom goes there, for his feet always lead him to the small table in the kitchen, to the comfortable couch in the living room.

“Before we start,” Prompto begins, ever hospitable to those under his roof, “Would any of you like some refreshments? Water? Something to eat?”

They don’t ask for food, but for water.

Noctis kind of wants to eat something, but he keeps quiet. If he eats anything, he’s probably going to throw it up because of this conversation.

After everyone’s glasses have been filled, and a few more glances view the room the Witch-King dwells in, Prompto clears his throat.

“Now then,” he says to the Mer Kingdom councilmen. Noctis wonders, in the back of his mind, where Regis is, if he knows they are there. “What are your suggestions?”

Noctis and Prompto are immediately buried in a mountain of requests. Noctis drops his gaze down to his feet. He shrinks. He curls a hand at the back of Prompto’s shirt.

The Mer want Noctis in their kingdom, sequestered away in the one place where they know he will be well protected, well cared for. Noctis doesn’t comment that he had been stolen from their boundaries once before. He stays small and quiet at Prompto’s back.

Hopes he has not traded one prison for the other.

_it is not the gods he fears._

They do not know of his age as a Mer. Only Prompto does (and, technically, those at the Vesperpool. Dino). Noctis says nothing.

Only when the Mer, the councilmen that remind Noctis of his countless and countless tutors back at the manor, begin arguing amongst themselves over the days Noctis should be in the Mer Kingdom and when he should be in Cape Caem, Prompto clears his throat.

Noctis still doesn’t understand what it means for Prompto to be crowned the ‘Witch -King’, but it’s a title that makes the argument cease almost immediately.

“How about this,” Prompto starts. His tone light, but there is a ferocious storm under his tongue. “Noctis spends weekdays here, in Caem, and weekends in the Mer kingdom. He needs time to adjust to this new culture and family, so let’s start small—ease him into it rather than push him into a life he only knows from a textbook.” Then, Prompto raises his chin. His voice turns into a steel that makes the councilmen straighten, makes them see Prompto as something other than a teen who lives by himself above a pawnshop. “And should Noctis wish to seek the solitude and peace of Caem rather than Insomnia, you _will_ let him.”

Prompto is smiling.

Everyone is keenly aware that this is not a suggestion.

The councilmen have no reason to disagree, to argue, and the decision is finalized within the hour. Noctis has two more days before he must live in a place he has never seen, barely remembers; was taken from at a year and a few days old, ~~and then abandoned in a Leiden parking lot.~~

He drifts to the living room and promptly wraps himself like a burrito with the weighted blanket. He ignores the raised eyebrows in his direction, ignores the soft mutters. Prompto clears his throat, sharp and biting, protective, and the previous discussion continues. Noctis drifts in and out of consciousness. He thinks they are discussing a treaty.

Prompto pushes a mug of hot chocolate in his hands the moment the councilmen filter out of his apartment.

Noctis breathes.

 

*

 

Noctis has always asked for little.

_he wants he wants_

_it is not the_

_MY_

He wants the quiet schedule of Cape Caem, wants the Thursday evenings where he fishes after a day spent googling how to fix the lighthouse. He knows he can ask for help now, knows he’s allowed, but it’s the premise of the thing.

He wants the bartering days of Monday and Friday, spent under the sometimes-sweltering heat of Eos’s sun as he carts his vegetables and fruits around, haggles for some spices, or for an Altissian dish he has never heard of before. He likes to set aside a certain number of Caem carrots for Jared and Talcott, who he likes to trade with for eyesores of rugs.

Noctis wants the warmth of Prompto’s apartment, wants the feel of the weighted blanket. He wants hot chocolate pressed into his hands even when he isn’t upset, prepared for Noctis _just because_. He wants greetings before he opens his mouth. He wants magic that gently swirls in the air, curls around him, light and comfortable and soft.

He wants strays that make their homes in the lighthouse. Wants the family of fox-shifters at the base of the forest near his cottage. Wants to watch bridal shows on Saturday mornings with Iris, wants to peel potatoes with Nyx for a stew he doesn’t even like to make. Wants to visit Prompto’s store to actually shop and pick out cookbooks and romance novels he thinks Ignis and Gladio would like.

_he wants_

Noctis has always asked for little.

 He has the chance, now, to ask for more.

An hour, or perhaps two, he’s lost track of the minutes, Noctis reappears on Prompto’s doorstep. Luna isn’t on shift when he steps inside the shop, but the employee that’s at the front desk recognizes him as he hesitantly slinks closer and waves him upstairs.

Winks, and tells him to “have a good time!”

Noctis wonders what they think he is going to be doing in Prompto’s apartment. Does he truly cry that loudly?

Gods, he hopes not.

The sight that greets him when he steps through Prompto’s door is a familiar one that doesn’t fail to give him deja vu. It’s a sight that he knows he won’t tire from. The gentle swirls of Prompto’s magic—a soft, Chocobo yellow and mint green—float in the air, almost lazily, and it wraps around Prompto as he chants something under his breath, crouched over a ceramic bowl that sits atop an opened book.

The spell’s fizzling out of existence when Noctis steps inside the living room. “Sorry, baby,” Prompto murmurs, sending him a slightly exhausted smile; always greeting him in some way before he opens his mouth. “I’m almost done.”

Noctis nods and tucks his feet underneath him as he sits on the couch.

It doesn’t take more than five minutes for Prompto to finish up his task. He places the ceramic bowl on the floor, in a random corner, and puts the book back on his bookshelf, before sitting down next to Noctis. He stretches, long arms winding above his head.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Noctis starts, “what was that spell for?”

“Oh, it was nothing fancy,” Prompto tells him. “See . . . there really is no spell to, like, expel bugs and the like when in an older building, like this one—something about the structure and framework, or whatever. So, I was just doing a regular charm to get rid of termites, roaches, and such.”

Noctis makes a face, and Prompto snickers.

“Aww, is my baby scared of the icky roa— _ack!”_

Noctis unrelentingly digs his foot into Prompto’s side. Prompto retaliates by squishing against him and ticking his sides with the same ruthless energy.

Once their shrieking laughter subsides, Noctis flicks through a magazine left on the other side of the couch. It’s mainly tailored for witches, as it’s about the best charms and spells to use during Fall, and there’s some “What Not to Do” sections that talk about rituals, and blood magic, and the like. He thinks a section talks about a controversy that involved necromancy.

Prompto knits, like he always does, and asks, “So . . . anything exciting happened lately?”

“You know all about it,” Noctis mutters. Prompto snorts.

He’s still a little harried at the way the docks were overrun like that.

“I mean, anything _new_ , silly.”

Noctis shrugs. “Nothing much, really—well, Iris’s got Nyx into reality shows now.”

Prompto chuckles. “Oh, really? What’re they watching?”

“Dunno,” Noctis replies. “Something about being young and restless.”

Prompto laughs for a good ten minutes at the thought of Nyx being enthralled with early morning reality television.

Quiet settles between them for a moment. Noctis savors the way Prompto’s warmth seeps against him, sinks into the very framework of his bone. He exhales.

“If . . . when I go to the, to the Mer Kingdom,” Noctis starts; his mouth feels like the desert plains of Leide. “When I . . . will . . ..” His voice fades. The words stick at the top of his mouth, hide underneath his tongue. He brings his knees to his chest, hunches forward.

Prompto sets his knitting needles down, makes a noise in the back of his throat. Soft, and concerned. Reaches for Noctis.

_hands reach and_

He exhales.

Progress.

Recovery is not linear.

“When I have to . . . live in the Mer Kingdom, um, _permanently,_ ” Noctis says in a murmur; his fingers make soft imprints on the blanket as he grasps it tightly, holds it for strength. “Will . . . will I . . . can I come back? Here, that is? I mean—.”

“Noctis,” Prompto interrupts.

Noctis closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to look over at Prompto’s expression. He doesn’t want to look and see that he has ruined the peaceful days between them. He doesn’t want to see the remains of the last good thing he has in his—

“Noct, please look at me.”

Noctis asks for little. He breathes. Opens his eyes and looks at the Witch-King he calls his best friend. Prompto sets the bundle of dark orange yarn aside on the coffee table. The needles are an onyx that shimmers, the tips are white.

Prompto reaches for him, and Noctis doesn’t flinch.

“Baby, don’t you understand?” Prompto’s hands are warm on Noctis’s face as he cups Noctis’s cheeks gently. The touch never burns, never harms. Noctis is at his safest place. “You will always have a home here. Please . . . please don’t doubt that, no matter what happens.”

 

*

 

_home is_

*

 

The Friday before he must live in the Mer Kingdom for the weekend finds him at Prompto’s kitchen table. He’s practically moved in since the Mer councilmen ambushed him by the docks of the cliffside. Noctis hasn’t fished since. Noctis doesn’t think he will ever not be a little disgruntled at that.

Prompto makes him a batch of hot chocolate without asking, like always, even though it’s still hot enough outside to be considered summer. Winter creeps in the distance, but the southernmost parts of Cleigne never really experience it.

There’s a light, gentle knock on the door.

_there’s a second knock and_

_he opens the door._

Prompto calls whoever it is inside. His hand is a protective weight on Noctis’s wrist. The door opens, and a face Noctis hasn’t seen since Old Lestallum steps inside.

“Pro . . . your Majesty.”

Noctis inhales so sharply, he chokes on his own spit.

Prompto rises, posture rigid. “Oathbreaker,” he says softly. “What are you doing here?”

Loqi swallows, but he doesn’t look down. Doesn’t look away. “I’ve . . . I’ve come to explain.”

“Oh?” Prompto tilts his head to the side, sounding curious, intrigued. He looks like he’s about to tell Loqi to leave. “And why should I listen to you, Oathbreaker? You, who has broken his oath to me? You, who has harmed me and mine in a neutral space?”

Loqi swallows again, audible.

Noctis looks between them, not so dissimilar to one of those tennis matches he once watched with Cor. The man was quite fascinated with the sport (in the way a lot of men, at least _human_ men, were fiercely passionate about football)—Noctis assumed the Mer would only be interested in professional swimming.

Cor watched the matches on Monday evenings.

“I . . . I know that what I did was, was improper,” Loqi speaks through trembling lips. Noctis can relate. “And I know that you’ve no right to listen to me if you wish not to, but I would . . . I would like to make peace.”

“There are some things you can never undo,” Prompto says lowly. Loqi winces at the cold, biting tone. “Things that you cannot repair once shattered by your own hands.”

Loqi curls his hands into fists, releases them. “I understand, your Majesty.” He sounds . . . hollow, but unsurprised. Like he expected this outcome.

Noctis knows he isn’t obligated; knows he should want to do nothing with the one who had taken him from his safest place. But Loqi had also been the one who guided him through the Vesperpool, through the Grove; the one who allowed Gentiana to find him.

Noctis knows he wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the things Loqi had done, had catalyzed. He reaches, grabs hold of Prompto’s elbow; waits for that stone-cold gaze to soften as it blinks in his direction. And then, that is when he speaks.

“Prom?”

Prompto scans Noctis over for injuries, even though Loqi hasn’t moved an inch from the doorway. “Yeah? Are you okay?” Prompto questions, and then soothingly squeezes Noctis’s fingers. He bites down on his bottom lip, glances in the direction where his bedroom lay. “You can head to my room if you’re uncomfortable . . . you’re safe here.”

_he is in his safest place._

“I know. I know I’m safe here,” Noctis says, and then looks toward Loqi’s defeated posture. He can relate. Gods, Noctis can relate so much. Perhaps that is why he squares his shoulders and says, quietly, “I think you should hear him out.”

Loqi’s gaze snaps in his direction. The hope is almost too much to swallow.  

Prompto’s frown deepens, but he doesn’t automatically say no. Noctis counts that as a win. “I don’t . . ..”

“Please?”

Noctis asks for little. They all know this. Prompto bites his lip, contemplative, and then glowers in Loqi’s direction.

“If I find your reasonings lacking, Oathbreaker,” he says in a tone that will not be ignored or denied. This little one-bedroom above a shop is the Witch-King’s domain. Do not trespass lightly. “You _will_ leave our presence.”

Loqi nods, a jerky movement that makes Noctis wince out of sympathy for his neck. “Of – of course, your Majesty.”

Prompto runs his hand through his hair. “Talk.”

 

*

 

in a village little visit, therein lives a boy and his sister. he is of witch blood, sells enchanted wares in exchange for scraps of food and medicine. his sister has a rasping cough in place of a breath. her days are numbering, the neighbors say. the boy is desperate for a miracle. he knows little healing magic. he has no teacher.

she stares at the asphalt, a listless look in her gaze. he tries to raise her spirits when a stranger’s shadow falls over them and asks what’s wrong. the boy explains. the man tilts his head in thought.

 _would you like for your sister to live?_ the man asks.

the boy says yes. yes, please. she is my world, my star. please.

save her.

the man does. he tips his hat goodbye, says. _the price to pay will come._

the boy cares little for costs. his sister is breathing.

years have passed when the man returns. his sister thrives in altissia. the boy is an apprentice for a witch who lives above a shop. _it is time,_ the man greets. _your cost is thus._

the boy does not ask how the man has found his apartment.

what if i do not accept this price? the boy questions instead

the man smiles. it is not kind.

if he does not, his sister will not see the dawn. his sister, who has an art show in the evening. his sister, who is still his world, still his star. his sister, who plans to spend a week in galdin quay the following year for her graduation. the boy breathes. nods.

he breaks his oath with the witch who lives above the shop.

 

*

 

When Loqi finishes talking, Prompto’s made himself herbal tea for a migraine. Noctis wraps his hands around his mug of hot chocolate, still a perfect temperature, and doesn’t bother hiding his smile when Prompto waves Loqi toward the kitchen table.

“Have a seat, Loqi,” Prompto says, fingers pressed against his temples. Without asking, he slides a glass of orange juice in Loqi’s direction, and then mutters, “That damned _Accursed_ . . ..” Prompto slips into another language, all round syllables and deep consonants.

Noctis thinks it sounds a little like Gralean.

Loqi takes a few gulps of his orange juice, and then tries to apologize again. His voice shakes as he speaks, and Noctis pats his hand for comfort, for support.

“Don’t apologize to me, I understand everything now,” Prompto waves the stuttered apologies away, and then eyes Noctis’s empty mug. “Want some more hot chocolate, baby?”

“Sure,” Noctis replies.

When Prompto’s busy with another batch of hot chocolate, Noctis eyes Loqi. He doesn’t look well. His hair, normally pulled back into a low ponytail, looks frizzled and unkempt. Dark circles line the bottom of his eyes. He looks like he hasn’t had much to eat these past few weeks.

Noctis pats his hand again.

“What happened to Aranea?” he questions quietly. “Is she okay?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she?”

“We split ways near the Disc,” Loqi tells him with a low shrug. “I’ve no idea where she is right now.”

At the pinched look Noctis slowly forms, Loqi adds, wryly, “It’s Aranea. She’ll find her way.”

Noctis cracks a small smile. Loqi is not wrong, after all.  

 

*

 

The day has come.

Noctis wakes with the sun, like always, like clockwork, and goes downstairs to find half the Crownsguard and Kingsglaive in his living room. He wheezes when they all stare at him in tandem. Noctis is keenly aware of his moogle-pattered pajamas.

“Good morning, Noctis,” King Regis smiles at his entrance, and motions to what’s basically a feast spread on his kitchen table. “Please, have a seat. We’d like for you to eat something before we go to Insomnia.”

Noctis wants to go back upstairs and bolt his bedroom door. He breathes. Progress, he reminds himself. He eats breakfast literally made for a king and a prince and tries not to look too disturbed by the easy way the guards move throughout his home, how they guard the windows and the doors.

He breathes.

As breakfast winds down, he clears his throat. “I have to, um . . . check on my garden, if that’s okay?”

“That’s perfectly fine, Noctis.”

His crops need little attending, so he goes over to the lighthouse and refills the stray’s food and water bowls. They curl around his ankles and purr. Noctis plays with them for a few minutes, calming himself down.

“I’ll be back soon, kitties,” he tells them.

One of them—a calico, he thinks—licks his hand and meows loudly. Noctis thinks it’s her way of saying _you better_.

He smiles.

The procession wait him at the docks. Noctis breathes and smothers the urge that makes him want to say, _sorry, actually, I don’t think I can do this_ , makes him want to go back to bed for most of the day. They wait for him in the sea. Noctis follows.

When he shifts, he sighs at the relief that pools over his scales, seeps into his skin. There’s echoes of shock at how young he is as a Mer.

 _Fair warning_ , he tells them, ignoring . . . how high-pitched he sounds at this moment. _But I’m like . . . slow. As a Mer._

King Regis chuckles. _That’s not a problem, Noct._

Even with his slower pace, the trip to the Mer Kingdom isn’t long, and soon it rises into view.

Insomnia is a dream. Wrapped in delicate but sturdy architecture—colorful, instead of dreary like he’d thought; color blooms before his eyes. Vivid reds and blues and greens. Mer of all shapes and sizes have found their home in this underwater palace.

“It’s okay,” King Regis—his father—says, and entwines his fingers with Noctis’s; guiding him, supporting him. Noctis feels, rather than sees, the abundance of guards in the distance; the world stills for the return of their beloved prince. Tide Mother circles the kingdom in glee. “I’ve got you.”

 

*

 

It's not like Noctis means to make King Regis think his own son hates him. It’s just that—it’s just that—King Regis reminds Noctis of everything he should’ve had. Everything he once had.

Everything he might not get again.

 

*

 

“You’re safe here, Noctis,” King Regis tells him as Noctis practically sticks to either his or Ignis’s side the entire time. Gladio’s, too, when he’s not in the training grounds with the other members of the Crownsguard.

Everyone stares at him in Insomnia. They cannot believe their prince has returned.

Noctis, wisely, doesn’t reply. He knows they aren’t expecting one. He should feel safest in the place that watched him be born, witnessed a year and a few days of his life. His safest place has always been nestled above a pawnshop.

 

*

 

home is not where he learns to walk. it is not in a sea that no longer burns. home belongs to a one-bedroom nestled above a shop, in a town seldom visit on purpose. home is where he fishes at night, and gardens by morning. home is where he googles how to fix a lighthouse almost every other week.

home is where the witch-king greets him before he opens his mouth.

 

*

 

Ignis finds him shaking behind some curtains. At least, Noctis assumes he is hiding behind curtains. The architecture behind Insomnia, breathtaking as it is, perplexes him. Ignis does not ask Noctis how he feels or if he is hurt. He sits beside him, guards Noctis’s smaller frame from other curious eyes. Noctis still isn’t breathing correctly, but the remnants of his nightmare are fading. His g . . . Ardyn’s sniping voice fades from the edges of his mind.

He exhales.

_Recovery is not linear._

“I have some duties to attend elsewhere,” Ignis says once it looks like Noctis has calmed down somewhat. “Would you care to join me? It is alright if you do not want to, Noctis. I will not begrudge you if you say no.”

Noctis agrees if only so that he does not have to be alone. There are no weighted blankets in Insomnia. There is no hot chocolate prepared with peppermint and a teaspoon of sugar. He breathes.

Ignis takes him on a journey through the Citadel, through the winding halls. Mindful of Noctis’s criminally smaller form, Ignis slows his gait considerably. Noctis is too relieved at the slow pace to feel embarrassed. He is well aware that he is the smallest—the _youngest_ —Mer in the Citadel.

The curse screwed with the mechanics behind his development, as a Mer, the Citadel doctors explained. Noctis was still surprised that Mer wore doctors’ coats underwater (was that even allowed?) to do more than nod as the doctor spoke more to King Regis than to him.

Lucis Caelum age slow, yes. They had longer lifespans than most Mer—a blessing from both the Tide Mother and Bahamut—but Noctis was forbidden access from his shift. Therefore, he developed twice as slowly as he should’ve. Instead of being a fifteen-year-old Mer, he was . . .

Noctis was six.

Ignis descends a curled path, and guides Noctis to an area that reminds him of a coral reef. A bright and colorful oval, of sorts, Noctis spies the shimmer of runes and other wards that surrounded the perimeter of the place. Guards line around it every ten feet, and they smile at him as he swims closer.

“Um . . .,” Noctis starts as they enter the area. There are a lot of . . . smaller Mer where they are, people Noctis thinks are around his age (his Mer age? Gods, this whole age premise gives him a migraine). They’re a lot faster than Noctis, more comfortable with their tails and their fins. “What is this place?”

“A Hatchery, your Highness,” says a guard to Noctis’s right. She smiles when he looks at her, waves a little. “Crowe Altius, resident magician of the Kingsglaive as I’m called,” she greets him warmly. Her voice sounds familiar. He thinks she’s one of the Mer who hangs around the docks with Nyx and two others sometimes. “It is a pleasure meeting you, Highness.”

“I . . . same to you,” Noctis responds. He barely swallows down the retort that she doesn’t need to call him _your Highness_. “Um. What’s a Hatchery?”

 _Where is your Hatchery? Your Reef?_ A Mer from the Vesperpool questioned once. Noctis still doesn’t know what those terms mean. _Your Pod?_

“It’s sort of . . . where most fry are raised,” Crowe explains once she finds the words to say. “A lot of fry are too small, too young, to be by themselves, so they’re raised in a Hatchery until they can support themselves, know how to fish and all that.”

“Oh.”

Would Noctis, if he had not been stolen, if he had not been cursed, have been raised in a Hatchery? Would he understand the terms _Pod_ and _Reef_ pertaining the Mer rather than other aquatic life? Would his love for the sea and for fish still fester deep in his soul if he were?

Noctis exhales.

“Oh, hey Prince Noctis!”

Noctis whirls around. He almost smacks Ignis in the face with one of his fins. _“Talcott?”_ he sputters at the sight of the boy he buys homemade rugs from almost every other week. “What are . . . you’re a _Mer?”_

“Sure am,” Talcott chirps.

Ignis hides his smile behind his hand. “Well then. It seems you’ll get along fine with the other fry, Highness.”

Noctis swallows. He still wasn’t good at communicating with people his own age when on land, what makes Ignis so sure he’ll get along with other . . . children?

“Grandpa’s a human,” Talcott explains as he slowly swims a circle around Noctis, staring at his tail, his fins, his scales, in quiet wonder. “So . . . I spend a few days here, and a few days with him!”

“That’s . . . nice,” Noctis says. He’s sure his eyes are far too wide. “Um . . ..”

Talcott beams at him and loops their arms together. “Hey, wanna play tag?”

“Sure . . .?”

“Awesome!” Talcott tugs him in a random direction, enthusiastically, and then hollers to the other Mer, “Hey! We have another one for tag!”

A group of younger Mer are crowding around a laughing man. From their chimes and their pleas, they are very enthusiastic in having “Libertus” play with them. Noctis wraps his arms around his stomach when most of them turn in his direction at Talcott’s yell. He almost wants to back out, ask Ignis to take him back to the Citadel where he can burrow himself in the nest King Regis told him was his.

But he doesn’t.

It’s probably because Ignis would get sad if he does.

“Fresh meat,” crows one of the kids.

It’s a little trippy. Calling another kid _a kid_ when Noctis is, technically, the same age. Gods, he wants an extra shot of Jared’s strongest whiskey.

A girl with hair the same color scheme as lionfish smacks the boys’ shoulder. “Don’t be _rude!”_

“I was not,” squawks the boy.

Noctis, despite himself, snorts.

“Alright, alright,” Libertus says with a laugh. He’s tall and well-built; the patterns of his tails remind him of a beta fish, but Noctis doesn’t really feel that nervous. Probably because there are four children hanging from his arms. “I guess I’m it, then?”

Most of the kids scatter in random directions, already shrieking with laughter. Talcott pulls him upwards. “Come on, come on,” he giggles, “Lib’s really fast.”

They play a few rounds of tag and other games. Noctis is still far slower than the others, but he’s getting faster.

He’s not really paying attention to where he’s swimming, as it happens when he’s having fun, when he’s allowed to coax his inner child back into existence. When the game of tag somehow reaches through the lower halls of the Citadel, Noctis knows he should watch where he swims. He knows that there are items and artifacts here that cannot be replaced, might be easily broken.

He’s not watching where he swims, and he rounds a corner too quickly. Too sharp for his inexperienced self to do anything except flail until he slows. His tail whacks against a column that hosts a vase that looks like it was from Accordo. Perhaps, Tenebrae.

Noctis watches it careen with bated breath. He moves closer, lunging to catch it before it falls to the floor, and the vase tips over right as his fingers brush against its’ delicately painted handle.

shatters.

Noctis can’t breathe. He can’t speak. The noise that falls off his tongue sounds like a manatee whose fin is pinned under a car wheel.

“Noct!” Ignis is at his side with one strong flick of his tail. “Are you alright? Are you injured? Let me see your hands.”

Noctis stares. He’s not sure what’s he’s even seeing anymore.

“Noctis? Your Highness? _Noctis!”_

They’re gaining attention, Noctis knows. He’s causing all sorts of concern, all sorts of trouble for others. _Make No Trouble_. His nails (claws) dig into his skin as he gasps out, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t _mean to—.”_

“It’s okay, it’s alright,” Ignis soothes. “No one’s mad at you, Noctis—.”

Noctis isn’t listening. He can’t even hear Ignis’s voice. _No one’s mad at you, little guppy, but I_ am _disappointed—don’t you know how expensive this is? You know you’re not to run about in the house—have you no manners? Have I not taught you how to behave?_

“I’m sorry,” Noctis croaks out. His sight blurs, shimmers. There isn’t really a floor to pull from his feet, but it feels like there is. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Apologies spill out of his mouth, and he knows it’s alarming Ignis, knows it’s worrying the others, but Noctis can’t stop them. They pry his mouth open the more he tries to smother them, they creep out like daemons creep in the dark. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

 _Please don’t hurt me,_ he tries to say.

What comes out is more apologies, more noises that don’t sound like a human, like a Mer; just sounds. Ice hooks the pit of his stomach, shakes it the way his minders would sometimes shake his shoulders when he misbehaved. It hangs around his neck like a noose. Tightens the way his g . . . Ardyn’s hands once did.

_Please._

_I didn’t mean_

“Please,” Noctis sputters out. He’s choking. He’s choking, how can he choke under water? “Please, I’m sorry.”

“Sweet _Shiva_ , kid, calm down, take a breath—!”

“Noctis—your Highness—no one is angry, it was an _accident_ , it’s okay—.”

“I’m sorry.” Noctis sounds like a broken record. Feels like his skin has been replaced by sheets of paper and he has been told to never let it rip, let it crumble. “I’m sorry.”

King Regis appears at the end of the hallways at all the fuss. Noctis grows more hysterical. It builds in his throat, pours out of his mouth like the bubbles and froth. Please. _Please._ He’s sorry. He didn’t _mean to_

Hands reach towards him.

“No, _no!”_ he’s crying now, choking on the sobs that pour out of his throat. He breathes through half a lung in his chest. He swims back, erratically, arms curled protectively in front of his face. He thinks he hits a wall. “No—don’t _touch me_ —please, I’m _sorry_ —I didn’t mean to—!”

_don’t you know how to behave_

“Okay. Okay. We won’t touch you,” King Regis says quietly, softly. Noctis wheezes violently. He can’t even see. All he sees are pieces of glass on the floor, on carpet, on a seabed. Something precious and breakable and “It’s alright, Noctis. Please . . . take a breath.”

Noctis tries. He really, really does, but all that sucks in isn’t air. It’s probably water, and he starts another spiral of chokes and coughs and sputters, another round of apologies as King Regis attempts to creep closer. He thinks he’s drowning. Ironic. How can a Mer drown?

_I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please, don’t_

He breaks into pieces. Shatters and floats among the waves, among the element that birthed Leviathan. He thinks he shifts back at one point, when he feels sand dip into the crevices of his toes rather than tail. He vaguely remembers sputtering the directions to Prompto’s apartment to whomever holds him; from the muscled arms, he thinks it’s Gladio.

“What happened?” Prompto’s voice is sharp; protective. The warmth and peace of Noctis’s safest place greets him, like always, before he can open his mouth. “Is he—?”

“It was a panic attack,” Someone says in an exhausted tone. Noctis makes another wheeze, another choked out noise that most definitely alarms the people around him. “I think—a vase broke, and . . .,” they trail off.

“I’m sorry,” Noctis croaks again; shudders like the side of his face burns. “I’m sorry.”

“Shh . . . it’s okay, baby . . . put him on the—,”

Noctis shatters again, gets pulled under another wave that’s cold and biting and loops a part of his ribcage through his throat.

He’s still in pieces when he becomes more aware of his surroundings. The blanket snug around his shoulders help. As does the mug of hot chocolate in his hands, charmed to a perfect temperature. Never too warm, never too cold. Voices drift over him like water. Muffled. He still can’t quite hear, still can’t quite see. But he knows where he is.

He exhales.

_home is with_

Noctis hunches over and makes a noise that burns his teeth. Conversation halts, and he feels Prompto gently brush Noctis’s hair out of his face, swipe his thumb underneath Noctis’s eye. “How’re you feeling?” Prompto asks quietly. His touch is grounding. Noctis exhales. “Think you can talk, baby?”

Noctis spills some of the cocoa on his hands. He makes another noise. Hunches over. Squeezes his eyes closed tighter. _Look at this mess, guppy—make no trouble,_

“Noct. _Noct_.” Prompto cups his cheek. Noctis makes another dying sound. “Hey. Shh. It’s okay. You’re safe here, you’re safe.”

_he falls and_

_THE ADAGIUM MUST_

_crumbles_

Noctis can’t breathe, and it hurts. It hurts, and he wants to start crying. He thinks he does. Prompto wipes his tears regardless.

 

*

 

he comes back at some point to king regis’s voice washing over him. it shatters and breaks like the vase tipped over his tail.

he thinks he becomes hysterical again.

_i’m sorry i’m sorry please don’t_

 

*

 

He comes back to himself by the scent of hot chocolate. Prompto’s is a familiar, comforting weight at his side as Noctis breathes the air back into his lungs. Quiet floats between them. A string of Prompto’s magic, a silver mixed with red, brushes against Noctis’s nose. He thinks it’s saying hello. They’re in the apartment by themselves, which isn’t really odd but it’s a Sunday. Noctis makes a noise in the back of his throat.

“Hey. _Hey.”_ Prompto’s hands are a heavy, grounding touch on Noctis’s shoulders. “Hey. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“What . . .,” Noctis tries to say, but someone has stuffed twenty cotton balls into his mouth. “What . . .?”

“You had a panic attack,” Prompto says slowly, and then shushes him gently when he makes another wheeze. “It’s okay. No one’s mad, baby. No one is mad at all.”

Noctis looks around the living room with barely opened eyes. “. . . where?”

“They went into town for dinner,” Prompto explains quietly; he eyes Noctis warily, like he’s expecting him to shatter again. Noctis thinks he just might. “I wasn’t comfortable leaving you on the couch by yourself to make them— _hey,_ no, don’t do that, it’s not your fault, baby,” he says in the most sternest tone Noctis has ever heard him use right as Noctis makes a sound similar to a whale that’s being skinned alive. “It was my choice, to stay here with you.”

Noctis’s wheeze is much quieter now, softened.

Prompto tucks Noctis’s head underneath his chin, and Noctis listens to the way his best friend breathes, listens to the steady rhythm of his heart. “Are you hungry, baby? I can whip something up quickly, if you’d like?”

He shrugs.

Prompto chuckles quietly. He doesn’t pick up his yarn or his knitting needles. He doesn’t turn on the TV for some white noise to fill the room. He stays there, stationary, chin propped on Noctis’s head, one arm curled around Noctis’s waist while the other plays with his fingers. A distracting, but soothing, notion. Noctis exhales.

_you little klutz, do you know how_

His shoulders shake; a lighter vibration, but it’s still there. Prompto hums and squeezes his fingers. Recovery is not linear, Noctis reminds himself like he always does, like he always will. It manifests in various ways.

It comes back to Noctis in flashes—him, swimming around a corner far too sharply than he could’ve controlled; him, shattering a vase that was priceless and most definitely an antique; him, spiraling into a panic the longer he stared at the shattered pieces; him, crying and gasping and stuttering as Ignis tries to calm him down; him, not breathing underwater when he _can_ ; him, flinching and shutting down the moment King Regis reaches for him.

Him, returning to himself in pieces, wrapped in that weighted blanket . . . shutting down again and again and again until Prompto’s magic settled over him like some sort of soothing crib mobile. Until Prompto coaxed him to unconsciousness via a spell.

Prompto helps him eat a soup. It’s nothing special, just a warm, soothing broth, and noodles. It takes all of Noctis’s strength to swallow it down.

He’s polished a decent (in his eyes, Prompto’s is another story) amount when the front door opens. His breath catches. Prompto grips the back of his neck in a firm, grounding touch.

“You’re safe here,” Prompto repeats as King Regis, Cor, Clarus, and Ignis reenter the apartment. Prompto makes Noctis stare at him instead of them, instead of their towering _towering_ heights. “You’re safe, okay? You’re safe here.”

Noctis exhales.

_he is in his safest place._

He nods.

Recovery is not linear. It manifests in various ways.

“Sorry,” he mutters, to the floor. Prompto makes a clucking sound with his tongue.

“Don’t apologize,” Prompto says, but his voice is too soft, too fond, for it to have any bite. He then eyes the empty hot chocolate, and says, “Let me get you some more, okay, baby?”

“Kay.”

Prompto bustles toward his kitchen. After a pause, Ignis smiles in greeting at Noctis and goes to help. King Regis sits down on one of Prompto’s armchair. Cor and Clarus both stand by the front door, guarding, protecting.

Noctis picks at another stray thread.

“So,” King Regis coughs into his hand. “You and the Witch-King, hmm?”

Noctis blinks. “What?”

At his perplexed expression, he sees Cor and Clarus share amused looks with one another. King Regis smiles, shakes his head. “Never mind, never mind.”

Prompto’s reappearance with a tray of hot chocolate and other snacks stifles the questions burning on Noctis’s tongue. He settles for drinking his hot chocolate instead.

 

*

 

There is a lot Noctis does not know. His knowledge is a book of crossed out references, blank pages, missing and weather-worn pages, and things added that aren’t correct. While he has a general knowledge of most of the supernatural community in Lucis, he knows there are holes there, knows there are things he just doesn’t understand.

Ardyn never shied away from telling Noctis he wished for the other to stay in the manor. Forever. Safe behind the walls he learned to walk and to run in, safe with people hand-picked and worthy. Safe with the clothes he dislikes and the shoes that give him blisters.

Even when Noctis lived at Cape Caem during that initial year, Ardyn would always tsk and talk about how he wished his little guppy would come back. The manor was so empty now, Noctis. Color left with you, you see.  

_your home is with me._

Without him saying much about it, no one is surprised at his lack of knowledge when it comes to the Mer. They might’ve been his favorite subject to study when he first moved to Cape Caem, but Noctis researched them slowly. He had other things to attend, after all, and most of the papers and journals were manned by humans. First-hand accounts were almost impossible to find.

Noctis returns from Insomnia and promptly buries himself in research, in anything that pertains the Mer. He can do that now, without feeling like he is stepping around a minefield. Iris finds him surrounded by stacks of texts that are almost as tall as she and cajoles him out to the living room, an arm wrapped around his shoulders.

She’s become much more tactile since she witnessed Noctis’s age as a Mer. They all have. Noctis thinks it should bother him more, but he soaks in the warmth eagerly. He can never have enough of the positive, warm touch they provide.

He’s pulled onto the couch and promptly tucked against Iris’s side. She doesn’t tease or snicker at the way he sinks and relaxes against her almost immediately. Iris flicks on a random channel—it turns to a show about vampire babysitters. Noctis raises an eyebrow at the premise.

“So . . .,” Iris drawls after a few minutes into the show. There’s such a misrepresentation of vampires, Noctis wants to rage on their behalf. “What’re you researching so deeply for? Anything I can help you with?”

Noctis shrugs. “S’just some Mer stuff.”

“Ooh?” Iris claps her hands. “That I definitely can help with. What’ve you got?”

“A lot of those texts are like . . . human accounts,” Noctis mutters; he twists his fingers together. “Or they’re, like, inaccurate to the point where even _I_ know it’s untrue.”

Iris snorts, and then nudges his shoulder. “Ask me!”

“Okay, so is Insomnia the only, like, official Mer kingdom?”

“Nope! There’s one in Altissia, in Galahd . . . I think there’s a small one around Cavaugh, and I’m pretty sure there’s one in Niflheim, too.”

“Do they all have royal families, too?”

“Um . . . I don’t know about Cavaugh or Galahd, but I know that Altissia has an elected, uh, secretary, and I guess Niflheim has a royal family . . . but they have an elected Emperor in charge.”

Noctis hums. Picks at a thread on the blanket thrown over their laps. “Is . . . is my mother dead, Iris?”

Iris chokes on her spit. “W-Wh—Where is that coming from?”

Noctis shrugs. “I . . . I haven’t seen her, so . . ..”

“She isn’t dead,” Iris says after she regains her composure. “She travels a lot for diplomatic missions to other settlements, likes to send them aid and everything. News travels slow, sometimes, so I don’t think she knows yet that you’re, well, here.”

“Oh.”

“But don’t worry,” Iris grins, “Her Majesty is, like, the fastest Mer around, so she’ll be back soon!”

Noctis listens to a commercial that discusses a new apothecary in Hammerhead, and then, after a few minutes, sighs. “This is going to sound dumb, but—.”

“Hey.” Iris interrupts him by poking his cheek. He makes a noise at the touch. “None of these are stupid but go on.”

“Are Mer supposed to live in these places? Like . . . can they live on their own?”

“They can,” Iris nods. “I know some Pods travel around a lot, jump from place to place. It’s only really frowned upon if you have, like, fry with you because we _do_ have predators, you know? And, well, you’re aware of how slow fry can be.”

Noctis huffs. “Yeah, yeah.”

Iris snickers a little.

Vampire babysitters’ switches to a werewolf sitcom.

“What about the time limit?” Noctis asks before he worries his bottom lip, picks at another thread.

Iris tilts her head. “Time limit?”

“The . . . how long a Mer can stay in their human form . . . b-before, um, health risks . . .?”

Iris blinks, opens her mouth. Closes it, makes a noise in the back of her throat, and then says, “There is no limit, Noct.”

It’s Noctis’s turn to blink. “. . . what?”

“That’s just a myth . . . well, a stereotype, mostly,” Iris explains. She makes herself more comfortable on the couch, legs tucked underneath her. “We don’t really . . . while it _is_ a little uncomfortable to be on land for more than a few hours at a time, there’s not _too_ much of a drawback? I mean . . . hmm . . .,” she pauses, muttering a little underneath her breath as she tries to find the words to explain, and then says, louder, “The longer we spend on land, the more our . . . longing, if you will, becomes for the sea. I know a lot of humans say that Mer aren’t meant to be, well, on land, because in a technical sense . . . we’re fish, but like . . . we can live in our human for our entire life. If we really want to.”

Noctis picks at a loose thread from his throw blanket. “What are the, um, drawbacks, then? Besides the longing?”

“It depends on the individual,” Iris says, slowly; finger pressed against her cheek in thought. “For me, I get a pain and an ache in my legs, starting from my, uh, ankles. For Gladdy, he feels a lot more . . . heavy? Like, it takes him some time to get used to the weight of his human bones, and that slows him down a lot. Dunno about Iggy, but—oh!” Iris brightens, perks up with the information that floats across her mind. Noctis doesn’t bother trying to hide his excitement; he’s safe here. “Your scales!”

Noctis blinks. “. . . scales?”

“Uh huh!” Iris nods, almost bouncing in place. Sometimes, it’s difficult for Noctis to see her as her Mer age; a twenty-five (well . . . twenty-seven, now) year old woman when, most days, he sees her as she is now; twenty-one and baby-faced. “Most Mer are saltwater creatures—though, there are a couple of us who can live in fresh, or both—but, for the most part, our scales are, uh . . . it loses its’ color, I guess, the longer we spend on land. It starts hurting, too, like a burn,” Iris adds as an afterthought.

Noctis chews on his lower lip. “What about me?”

“Hmm?”

“I . . . I’m _now_ able to shift,” Noctis says. He trains his gaze on the pink coeurl-print pajamas Iris wears. “I don’t . . ..”

A part of Noctis does yearn for the sea, now, but the largest part of him still takes his feet to an apartment cluttered with safety, with love, with warmth, to a witch-king who never fails to make him hot chocolate just the way he prefers and greets him before he opens his mouth.

Iris shrugs, bites her lip. “Curses suck,” she ends up saying.

Noctis laughs. They both pretend he isn’t choking on his tears.

 

*

 

Sundays used to be for crying.

They still are, don’t get Noctis wrong, but he doesn’t cry as often as he used to. He doesn’t spend the entire day wrapped in his blankets, holed up in the darkness his bedroom provides, as much. Mostly, it’s because he has people who come in and out of his house on the regular, people who would know what he was doing, and gently place him downstairs so that if he were to cry, he wouldn’t be doing it by himself.

But now Noctis also spends his Sundays in Insomnia. He has no idea if he’s even capable of crying underwater. He thinks it’s possible. Noctis has seen stranger things while in the kingdom he, apparently, has to lead.

Though . . . he isn’t in Insomnia at the moment. A few days before, King Regis asked him if he would like to accompany him on a diplomatic trip to Altissia. Noctis agreed before his anxiety got the best of him. He did, however, freak out the moment he was back on Cape Caem. Prompto eased some of his fears when he handed him a knitted sweater.

Noctis had touched the fabric curiously. Striped in pale blue and silver, Noctis could feel the warmth of the layered charms and spells Prompto wove into it as it was created. “What’s this for?”

“For you, silly,” Prompto had said. When Noctis rolled his eyes, Prompto added, “You can wear it to Altissia—don’t worry, it’s got a temperature charm on it. You won’t get overheated if you wear it in the sun, and you won’t get cold, either.”

“Okay, but . . . what is it _for?”_

Prompto shrugged, smiled a little. “So, you won’t feel so homesick when you’re there, of course.” He went back to knitting something else, the beginnings of a scarf. “Though, there’s a fuckton of charm-work on it, so, you know . . . if anything happens, I’ll know.”

“You’re getting soft with your old age.” Noctis had sniffed, and then sputtered and begged for mercy when Prompto initiated Tickle Round Pt. 2.  

They don’t travel to Altissia as Mer. Gladio had laughed when Noctis asked if they were, ruffling his hair. “That’s a long trip, princess. We’d die from exhaustion. And my job is to make sure you _don’t_ die.”

Altissia was thought to be the birthplace of Mer. From the myths and the Cosmology, groups of Mer traveled from Altissia to other places in Eos and built their own settlements into what it is today. Altissia—and all of Accordo, in general—are proud of their heritage, of the city that thrives beneath its’ concrete.

When they arrive in Altissia, it’s around dinner time. They check into the Leville Hotel quietly. If regular citizens know who walk among them, they say nothing. Noctis does his best not to hunch into himself as they walk, as he feels curious eyes roam over the youngest member of their group. King Regis rests a supporting hand on his shoulder.

Noctis exhales.

The capital city looks like a dream with its’ canals, and narrow, winding streets, and delicate, beautiful architecture.  

Because he’s a literal child—in his Mer form, and, technically, in his human form, too—he’s not expected to attend any of the meetings Regis has on his schedule. Noctis thinks he would be able to handle it, as he once had to live and breathe formal etiquette, but he’s well aware that he, also, would _not_ be able to handle it.

So, instead, Noctis (and Gladio) goes on a tour. He doesn’t do much exploring, though, as it’s only the first day and they are here for a full week. He takes notes of the fishing spots around the capital city, takes photos with Gladio (he even wears a funny hat in one), and eats shrimp alfredo for lunch. Gladio has surf n turf.

On his third day there, King Regis has no meetings, no other duties to attend in Altissia. It’s clear he wants to bond with Noctis, wants the son he doesn’t really know or understand to feel comfortable around him, because they fish the entire day. Noctis is ecstatic, their entourage . . . not so much.

“Why don’t we just shift and catch them?” says Gladio. His shoulders are sunburnt. That’s what he gets for not wearing sunscreen even though “I’m a Merman, I don’t _need sunscreen.”_

Noctis pouts. “It’s not the _same_.”

King Regis is just – delighted by how expressive Noctis is becoming, unwinding. Fishing is probably the best way to get to Noctis’s heart. That, or hot chocolate.

On the fourth day, near the First Secretary’s Estate, Noctis’s gaze catches sight of a flyer. An art show, the pink lettering states. _Lucis at sunrise by Stella Tummult_. Noctis goes.

The gala is decked out in beautiful, oil-canvas and watercolor paintings of various parts in Lucis at sunrise. Some parts, Noctis is unfamiliar with as he’s never been—like Wiz’s Chocobo Post or Coernix Station or the Rock of Ravatogh—but it’s still lovely, nonetheless.

He doesn’t know what Loqi’s sister looks like. He knows who she is when she steps in his line of sight. Her hair curled and swept into an elegant updo, she’s dressed in a blue dress that compliments her pale skin. Black heels.

She knows who he is, too.

“Oh!” She grins as he approaches her. She looks so similar to Loqi, Noctis is having a little bit of whiplash. “Noctis, it’s good to see you!”

“You too,” he says, ignoring Gladio’s quirked eyebrow. “Loqi talks about you often.”

Stella snorts and then leans closer to say, conspiratorially, “It’s because he has no life.”

Noctis chokes on his laughter.

They decide to get dinner at the floating restaurant—Maagho, it’s called. King Regis and Co. are still in a meeting. It’s five in the morning at Cape Caem. In Altissia, it’s around six thirty. Noctis sends the text anyway.

_ur sis is nice. how is she relatd 2 u._

Surprisingly (well . . . not really, given Loqi’s awful sleeping habits), a reply comes a few moments later. _You little brat. Gods, your texts are horrendous._

_isnt it past ur bedtme_

_I’m going to force-feed you broccoli when you return, you egg,_ Loqi threatens.

Noctis snickers and tucks his phone back into his pocket. Stella returns from the bathroom right as their food is placed before them. Maagho has good food, he decides. He knows Coctura would go buck-wild at their seafood menus.

Altissia isn’t awful, all in all. He still prefers the fishing spots by Caem, though.

 

*

 

Noctis wakes, shuddering, a scream at the tip of his mouth, to find that he is not in his childhood home. He is not wearing shoes that hurt his feet. He is not being pulled and pushed and grabbed and—Noctis curls into himself tighter; digs his fingernails into his skin, feels an odd relief at the pain it brings. He is in Altissia, he tells himself. There is no danger here.

Recovery is not linear.

An ache hangs loose around his neck, but it tightens the more he tries to breathe. A noose. Ardyn’s hands Noctis smothers a few noises with his pillow. Beside him, he feels King Regis twitch in his sleep. That’s right, he remembers that it was decided Noctis would not sleep in his own room. Not while they were in a foreign country, for all that Accordo was their friend and ally. Noctis

_falls and_

_shatters_

_THERE IS A STAIN_

He exhales but chokes on the sobs that beg to be released. Noctis does not want to wake the others. They’ve spent most of their day in back-to-back assemblies, surrounded by other noblemen and women who had silver mouths and silver spoons. They are exhausted, he knows. He does not want to wake them.

A few sobs slip out of his mouth. His shoulders tremble.

He is safe here. He is safe here. He is safe here. He is

He doesn’t realize he’s speaking aloud until King Regis sits upright and turns the bedside lamp on, until the man who is his father ~~but is not because his father is not a king but a man who~~ turns and sees the crumbled, trembling form Noctis makes.

“Oh, little one.” Regis reaches for him. “It’s alright . . . shh, it’s okay. Just a nightmare, Noctis. It was just a nightmare.”

Noctis knows King Regis does not understand why he cries harder, but Noctis gives him points for comforting him, for trying, regardless. He knows he is not an easy pill to swallow.

 

*

 

It is kind of sad, how one person can ruin a single word for you.

 

*

 

Aranea comes for him on a Monday afternoon. He’s wrapping up his table at the market, having a casual conversation with the elderly woman who lives down the street from him, when he spots her coming towards him. No one else realizes who she is, but there’s no problem with that.

He has no reason to fear Aranea.

“Kid,” she says as per her normal greetings. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Noctis agrees.

Aranea has never been unkind to him.

They don’t go to the docks. Noctis knows they will be interrupted. They will be overheard. He does message Prompto that he’s going someplace and might not be back until later. He receives a thumbs up in return. Aranea takes him to a smaller HQ on the coast of Cleigne, where they sit in the outdoor restaurant.

“So,” Noctis starts after they’ve ordered food. He clears his throat. “What’d you want to tell me?”

“Kid.” There’s a half-smile on Aranea’s lips. “How old do you think I am?”

He blinks. “Um . . . like, thirty?”

Her boisterous laugh causes heads to turn in their direction. Noctis plays with his stray to deter his nerves, but he doesn’t shrink. Doesn’t hunch over. He exhales. Progress is not linear. It manifests in different ways.

“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, doing what I thought was right,” Aranea begins quietly. Noctis almost doesn’t hear her. The solemn look she wears on her face is unfamiliar to Noctis; it makes his breath catch in his throat. “But . . . as I’ve always said, good intentions . . ..”

“Pave the road to hell,” Noctis whispers.

“You can tell me no, Noctis,” she says. “You can tell me no, and we can just have lunch, and go back to Cape Caem. You don’t have to listen to this if you don’t want to, okay? You can say no.”

Noctis swallows. A waiter brings them their food. After a few bites of his sandwich, he straightens. He looks Aranea in the eyes.

He says, “Please. I want to know what you have to say.”

She smiles. It’s not a happy one.

“Okay, fry,” she says, the fondest Noctis has ever heard her, and takes a breath.

 

*

 

it starts two millennia ago. daemons roam eos, both on land and on water. there is a war in what was once solheim. there is a sacrifice. a girl history does not remember bleeds on an altar. the ocean rages, and half the earth drowns. the tide mother breathes live back into her. she becomes a messenger, a lower divine goddess.

 _starburner_ , leviathan decrees. _my beloved child._

two brothers fight beneath the waves. only one is to be the true king of lucis, bahamut insists. only one is worthy, is good.

the eldest has starscourge in his veins. the youngest son is crowned. the eldest, locked onto land. the girl follows the brother cast aside. she does not regret her choice. the tide mother understands. will always love her children. bahamut, enraged, blocks the girl’s shift.  

they have a fight and separate, as squabbling siblings often do. when she arrives back at their cottage in cape caem, on a cliffside where a lighthouse will be one day be built, the brother is not there. she does not find him until decades later, when she hears rumors of a scientist. of little fry who go missing.

she arrives in gralea. only one baby survives the trip to lucis. a nametag is curled around his little wrist. _noctis._ the child cannot shift. he burns when underwater. she does the only thing she can—goes to her brother who still lives, is cursed like she. she finds him in duscae.

 _i want you to heal him,_ she demands on her older brothers’ doorstep. _save the fry—do something._

the brother does. the baby sleeps easy through the night. they do not know why he cannot shift, but the papers she stole from zegnautus keep explain. _i have discovered a curse,_ the papers read, _that blocks a mer’s shift. slows their aging._

she is horrified. for mer, the ability to stay on land is a choice. she and her brother are bedtime stories told to misbehaving fry.

the brother is intrigued.

 _let me raise him,_ he says. _he has no home now._

the girl almost refuses. _you can barely keep coral alive; how do you expect to raise a_ baby _?_

_the faith my dear sister has in me._

_he’s going to an orphanage,_ the girl says. she reaches for the babe who slumbers in her brother’s arms. _we cannot help him._

the brother smiles. raises a clawed hand. _or i could kill you both._

the girl is immortal. the baby, cursed or otherwise, is not. she agrees and, somehow along the years, becomes a driver and a guard for that same baby. she hates the way the baby is treated, hates the way her brother’s love has been twisted and twisted and torn. she wants to take him away.

every time she tries, the brother smiles. _i could kill him, instead._

she cannot save him. the baby grows into a teen. he asks to live in the abandoned cottage of cape caem. she takes him. installs his bathtub. gives him a coffee machine. she fights with her brother. she sends the baby gifts.

she slits besithia’s throat the day after the baby’s curse has been lifted. the scientist, the man who once loved the woman who gave birth to the witch-king, will not harm anymore children. shiva visits her two days after loqi returns to cape caem. _starburner_ , shiva greets with a smile, _i have a task for you._

the girl goes back to her brother. says. _you will leave him alone._

 _or you’ll do what?_ the brother questions. he looks bitter. he looks old. tired. _we are both immortal, my dear._

she smiles. it is full of sadness, of regret. holds out a vile of blue liquid that holds the blood of a goddess. of a sacrifice few know. _would you like to be free, ardyn? do you want to rest?_

the funeral is a quiet one. only she is left to mourn.

 

*

 

Aranea takes him to Ardyn’s grave on a Friday morning. Noctis places tulips and sunflowers on the granite. Sprites sit in his hair, on his shoulders. He cries quietly. He’s always crying when Ardyn is involved.

Noctis says goodbye.

He goes home to a Witch-King who already has hot chocolate prepared, to a place where he can cry, can slouch, can walk without the shoes that hurt his feet.

He goes to his safest place. He does not look back. Not once.

 

*

 

Noctis trades his goods on Monday and Friday. On Wednesdays, he likes to barter the things he makes. Tuesday’s are for cleaning, grocery shopping, and other household chores. He fishes on Thursday evenings. He still walks to Prompto’s apartment; his safest place always welcomes him back. His bruises fade. His glass heart begins to heal. He can breathe.

Recovery is not linear.

_he still misses his_

Noctis looks at his reflection every mirror. He can’t count the outline of his ribs anymore. The dark half-moons under his eyes are almost nonexistent. “He did what he thought was best,” Noctis says to his reflection each morning, no matter how much he trembles, how much his fingers shake. “But it doesn’t make it right.”

He’s starting to believe the words he says.

Weekdays are spent as a human. Weekends, he lives as a Mer. Sometimes, he’ll visit the Vesperpool or annoy Dino at the Quay. The Grouper (her name is Marilith, he discovers) still asks if she can eat a human for Noctis. It’s turned into her customary greeting. Aranea takes him out for lunch every other Tuesday.

He exhales.

It manifests in different ways.

_i only want what’s best_

It is a Thursday evening. Noctis has spent the better half of his day in the lighthouse, Google a trusted friend and companion as he tries to keep the stray cats out of the elevator. He can call people to fix the lighthouse; he has the ability, the freedom to, now, but it’s the principle of the thing. It’s just not the same.

He’s still getting used to having choices that are not laid out as a double-edged smile.

Noctis prepares his gear quietly, where it waits on the dock Gladio and Cor fixed for him without asking. A few Mer are near the shore. Some sunbathe in the last dredges of sunlight; others are content to watch their Prince. Noctis, used as he is now to the way the Mer just . . . stare at him whenever he’s around, grabs a random piece of bait from his box. He casts his line.

Exhales.

You can breathe now.

His safest place is where the witch-king slumbers. Noctis is always welcome there. Nightmares don’t visit as often, but they still lurk. He still has them. The dreams outnumber them, though. Progress, Noctis reminds himself, is not a clean-cut road. It is not the simple steps he must take when he fishes. He breathes. Casts another line.

Sometimes, it rains. Storms. Noctis likes to sit on his porch after he’s placed the plastic sheets over his crops and plants. He has never been afraid of Ramuh, of the rain.

_he is safe here._

It’s a Thursday evening. 

_you will always have a home here, baby._

He reels in his first catch of the night. It’s a Dark Allural Sea Bass.

**Author's Note:**

> me: this is gonna be a cute lil drabble!  
> me, an hour later: *writes this monster instead*


End file.
